Project Fenrir
by brighamgaroz32
Summary: The top three infamous military personnel have been hunted down and eliminated by the same country they fought for, but their deaths were faked so they can fulfill their government's purposes in secret.
1. Prologue

Prologue

All hell broke loose.

** July 30, 2047**

The world was falling into another great depression. The economy was falling terribly because too many resources were being used up too fast.

A couple of miners found something that many would consider impossible to find. They found one-hundred-percent naturally, clean water.

The miners never claimed loyalty to any nation, causing _every _nation to _politically _argue for which nation should claim it.

The head of a nation claimed that it was found on their territory but was later proven wrong when the facts stated that it was found on neutral ground. Then all head of every nation continued to discuss about who can claim it. It was a valuable resource but since it was only less than one-percent of the entire planet, whoever nation claimed it could become the richest one at the price of the fall of all the others.

None of them wanted to lose but none of them could figure out a way to satisfy everyone's needs,,, More like everyone's _wants_.

Despite the issue of the economy, technological advancement has been flourishing like nothing before.

Due to the fact that the higher-ups paid more attention to what was happening politically than to what was happening on their own soil, scientists, inventors, and theorists knew no boundaries.

In the medical field, prosthesis has dramatically improved to the point where the prosthetic limb is connected to the nervous system. Once that was mastered, neural implants and other such augmentations started its uprising with no limitation. Why would it? The military used it to their advantage.

In another field of science and technology, space travel has been improved to the point where mankind can travel to other planets within the solar system. It was pricy, but then again, it was only used for luxury purposes. It still had its issues as well.

Five years later, politically speaking, they finally decided to form an agreement in which they decided to split the shares equally. Many disagreed openly about it but the majority overruled them and they decided to go along with it. The majority, underhandedly, merged together to form one nation and called themselves The Government because it was their government that controlled everything and no one else.

** July 30, 2062**

Ten years after the treaty was signed, the nations had an extremely large refinery built at the site at which the precious liquid was found.

Their agreement led each and every single one of them into a world of peace. Maybe not prosperity but the idea of _world peace _was good enough to live with for the time being.

After about two years, the nations began to show significant signs of positive change within their economies. People considered it _the golden age _and lived a fairly good life. Everything was prospering; science, technology, space travel, and even nuclear studies. Since every nation lived in peace with the other, they thought that there was no need to regulate nuclear science which brought forth wondrous advances in everything, fortunately.

But that all changed when the refinery was destroyed five years after it was constructed.

** August 14, 2067**

The destruction of the refinery resulted in an investigation of every nation led by The Government.

Rumors spread that the fault was to the nations that disagreed with the treaty to begin with. The investigation went unbiased despite these rumors but to no avail. The investigation turned up with no evidence of any nation being responsible for the destruction.

The conclusion of the investigation made every nation feel perturbed about the situation they were in to the point where they started to point fingers at any other nation but their own. The tension grew to the point where they were threatening each other with their nuclear weapons of mass destruction.

All of them viewed it as an act of war and initiated a missile strike on a different nation, claiming that it was in self-defense everyone knew better than to believe that.

The war is now known as the Resource War. The whole world felt the immense impact of that war no matter what they called it.

Ideas and theories of conspiracy led to a few nations that merged to form The Government to break off and become the Resistance.

** May 20, 2070**

War never changes, though. The methods of battle, on the other hand, went from bad to worse.

By using any possible method to get the upper hand on their enemies, all sides of the battle field turned to their savage and primal ways.

Torture was no longer frowned upon, but encouraged. Executions were broadcasted proudly. Above all that, thanks to the boundary-less scientists, chemical warfare was initiated lightly.

The advancement of stem cell research has greatly improved combat results along with neural implants, augmentations, and military prosthesis replacements, soldiers never looked nor felt more powerful.

Other super soldier programs were also announced to any citizen willing to fight for their country. Only that with a few people willing to lend a hand, military branches had to resort to other methods of combat.

** June 26, 2103**

The use of androids for combat took over the battlefield for the human soldiers to remain in cryogenic sleep. They were put to sleep to refrain from aging and were only thawed out when the droids' cycle of fighting was over.

** February 15, 2113**

The androids were completely diminished; thawing out the human soldiers had to be done early but due to the early thawing process, half of the military personnel died because of the failings of cryoprotectants used before they were put in cryostasis.

Mastering cryonics was still a long way ahead.

** August 17, 2127**

Earth was becoming a warzone; no place for civilians to flourish. The colonization program was initiated where space stations were built to orbit around planets within the solar system.

Using colonizing ships, the Government was the first to begin evacuations for the civilians but ran the risk of having a ship being shot down on sight.

The other super states followed through with their own similar programs and began to ship off their civilians to the dark voids of space.

** July 3, 2172**

Resources became rarer and rarer to come by. If the war continued, sooner or later, the soldiers on the field would've been fighting with sticks and stones. Their last resort came to pass that all sides of the field would launch a nuclear strike on their enemies.

Whether they believed it or not, all of them have lost the war. They've lost so many, including what they were fighting for. Their idiotic stubbornness led them to think that if they were going to lose, they were going to bring all they could with them.

** July** **7, 2172**

Operation: Last Minute Recruiting was initiated to recover as many soldiers as possible to evacuate them to the nearest space station; one that orbited around the earth itself.

La Habra.


	2. Chapter 1

Location, Location, Location

** July 10, 2172 21:23**

** Aboard the colonizing vessel DAWNING HOPE**

** EARTH (Seven minutes before final nuclear strike)**

** Evac from drop zone lead by unknown government**

** Operation: Last Minute Recruiting**

"Hey-" yelled a pilot, one of the very few that were left on the planet, "Hey, demo-man'!"

"Don't call me that." said the man being yelled at by the pilot.

"Hey… hey, cyborg, get on board the ship. We gotta go!" he hollered from the hanger of ship to the "cyborg" when the cyborg, all of a sudden, jumped right in front of the pilot, grabs him by the throat, and slams him on the wall of the hanger.

"Call me that again and I swear," he threatens, "that will be the last thing you say in your forsaken life." The cyborg's threat silenced the pilot and he let him go, dropping the pilot to the floor, leaving him to choke and gasp for breath as he looks for a seat nearby.

It was a stormy night and colonizing vessels began to take off into space. The Dawning Hope was the last of all of them that was left on the base, the cyborg finds a seat and just sits there; paying close attention to his surroundings, wondering what he just agreed to. "Sorry I have to do this." the pilot said as he tranquilized the cyborg, piercing his neck with a needle, forcing him into a deep slumber.

** July 7, 2172 14:53**

** Rico's Bar**

**EARTH**

** Operation: Last Minute Recruiting**

"Bartender, hook me up with another one." a drunken military man in uniform said while slamming his empty glass on the counter and wiping his mouth. "Pilot, what are you doing here?" his Commanding Officer said in a tone of disappointment. "The hell do you care?" the pilot said, swinging himself to face his C.O. whom took a seat beside him, "I can do whatever I want."

"Pilot, you and I both know that there are two reasons you'd be drinking like that at a place like this."

"And they is?"

"Well, one: you are celebrating a certain achievement or two: you…are…depressed."

"Its number two buddy."

"Enough with the drinking," the officer said in a disgusted tone as he takes the glass away from the drunk pilot. "Tell me, why are you depressed?"

"I lost my last lead."

"Are you talking about your personal investigation?"

"Yeah…hey…why are you here?"

"I received a letter for you from my superiors-"

"And?"

"And you are to report to this location," he hands the pilot a slip of paper with the information, "at a certain time."

"And what if I say no."

"Well, like the Marines say, its 'do or die,'" he says as he gets up from the seat and walks away towards the door. "I'm Air force dumb**s!" the pilot yells after his officer left the bar.

The next morning the pilot wakes up on his bed with a hangover, he gets up and shifts to sit at the side of his bed. He pulls out the slip of paper and began to read, "The Dawning Hope will be leaving at 21:30, July 10, 2072, be there, or rest in peace." he says aloud as he read. He flips to see the back and he sees that his officer wrote a side note for him, _DO OR DIE, _was written on the back of the slip. "Ahh s**t," he says arrogantly after reading, "guess I'll go."

** July 10, 2172 20:37**

** EARTH**

The loud hiss of pressurized air leaving the cryopod roused a large man from his cryogenic sleep.

"System: malfunction." Cried a mechanical voice, "Emergency cryopod release."

The pod's hatch flung open. Fresh air, or whatever could be considered as fresh air, rushed in to welcome the large man back to the world of the living. He took in a deep breath to fill his lungs with present-day air.

"Welcome…soldi…to…2172" the computer started to static and buzz at the most random moments when it would try to communicate.

"That's too d**n long." The man said, "What the hell happened here?"

The area was filled with five cryopods, including his pod, while wires and pipes scattered throughout the floor. Wires hung from the low ceiling, sending sparks across the messy floor every now and then.

After taking in the interior of the small area, the man finally decided to unbuckle himself and to look around the area. He stopped in front of an unopened pod and stared intriguingly into it and says, "D**n, John. Why didn't you wake up?" He looked around at the other pods and to his dismay; all of them were filled with suffocated corpses. "Ah s**t! Frank, Era, Tom? Just what the f**k happened?"

He turned back to his pod to pick up his gear and picked up a bottle filled with his favorite beverage.

Rum.

As he walked out of the small tight space, he began to drink his rum. He turned to look at his fallen comrades for the last time and said, "It's been an honor serving with you all." He turned to face the door to the exit and left.

Outside the door, he spotted a small electronic-note in the shape of a small pen. He pulled out the small holographic screen from it to read what it said.

To the loyal soldiers of Vault: 1E-55,

Due to your excellent performance on the battlefield, you five haves been granted access to board

the Dawning Hope colonizing ship.

Arriving at the location is a tall, muscular man, with a bottle of rum in his left hand and the note on the right. He looks at the note and back towards the landscape, the skies were clear of any past storm clouds, an abandoned launching station with a few acres of green grass next to it. He looks around in confusion as he sits down on the hard floor and looks over the horizon, gazing upon the dozens of lights escalating into the sky. _They're bombing the d**n planet, _he thinks to himself as he sees the first few nukes beginning to hit the land all around him with him being at the bare minimum of a safe distance from the blast radius. He just stays where he is, sitting down, not bothering to move to cover or to any form of safety from the force of impact from the missiles as they hit him.

He sits there for another few minutes until he notices a helmet of a soldier a few meters away. He finally stands up after a few minutes of just staring at the helmet, stretches, takes a sip of rum, and walks towards the helmet. "The communicator should still be intact." he says to himself while walking towards the helmet. He picks up the helmet and tears out the communicator from the inside and places it on his ear. "Hope this still works," he says to himself and turns on the communicator.

"Sir, we're receiving a transmission signal."

"Where from?"

"Earth, Sir."

"Earth? Pilot, look at the planet, it's bombarded from nukes, how can there even be a signal?"

"Sir, shouldn't we just check…just in case?"

"Alright pilot, put it on speaker."

"This is the captain of La Habra Head Quarters, do you copy?" the captain listens for a while and only hears radiation static interference from the com link. "You see pilot, its noth-"

"Aaaaayyyy," the man from earth said through the ear piece he was wearing, "the hell are you guys? Ya'll said you's gonna be here at 21:30."

"Soldier, we said we were leaving at 21:30." the captain responded in an annoyed tone. There was static for a good moment, "Oooohhhh." was all the man could say.

"Sir, I'm gonna patch you to the pilot, is that understood?" the captain asks.

"Oh sure, take all the time ya need." the man responds to the captain in a sarcastic tone.

"Sir this is Pilot Scott Richards of the La Ha-"

"SCOTIEEEEEE!...do me a favor and beam me up…pleeeeeaaase…pretty pleeeaaase, pretty please with a cherr-"

"Sir, are you drunk?" the pilot asks, interrupting the man's pathetic begging.

A brief pause occurs. "I don't really know…I had nothin' to do but drink, so, um…maybe?" he says in a sincere voice.

"I can smell it from here-"

"D******(lasts for like five minutes)***N…how?"

"Sir, are you intoxicated by radiation?"

"Maybe, I dunno, is that how ya get drunk?"

"We're sending a ship to get you, and a Haz-Mat crew as well to your location."

"Don't hurry!" the man responds sarcastically.

A few hours later, at the brink of dawn, a medium sized gunship arrives and lands on the field right in front of the man. He sees a bright light as the door to the body at the side of the ship began to open. A crew of three men in haz-mat suits walks out to greet the man. "Sir, have you experienced any side-effects from the radiation from here?" the lead man of the haz-mat crew asks suspiciously since they were standing on a hazardous area. "I tol' ya I'm not drunk or incoxitated." the man responds. He brings the bottle of rum to his lips only to realize that he finished drinking the last drops of rum. He bursts into tears, startling the crew, and starts crying, "Why? Why is the rum always gone…why…WHY!?" he tends to say in between sobs. "Um, Sir, we need you to come with us to La Habra."

"I'm not going anywhere. (sniffles a bit) you don't understand, the rum is all gone!" he yells at the three suited men.

The leader thinks for a moment, trying to find a way to bring the drunk back to the home base. "Sir," the leader hesitantly starts, "we have a bar on the station." he says and flinches right after.

The man looks enlightened at the leader's statement and begins to walk towards them. "Well then, whatcha waitn' for, let's go." he says as he walks and shoves himself through there formation. At his third step after going through the crew, he blacks out and slams onto the floor, causing a loud thud as he hits the floor.

"Help me get this big guy onboard." the leader of the crew says, annoyed at the fact that he and his crew had to go through great lengths just to rescue a drunk.


	3. Chapter 2

Introductions

** July 11, 2172 09:30**

** Aboard the home base: LA HABRA**

Silence…nothing but pitch black silence, so silent that even the sound of a single strand of hair falling to the floor can be heard. The single lamp, hanging from the ceiling, turning on startled the cyborg to consciousness, slowly awakening from his slumber.

"Ooowwww…wai'…wha'…oh why do I feel like if someone hit me over the head with a beer bottle." he says in a hushed tone, as he slowly opens his eyes, adjusting to the brightness in the room. His tinted goggles helping him sustain the sudden brightness in the room; his headache wasn't helping the process go by any faster. When he can finally see clearly, he sees the room for what it really is; a medium size room with a one-way mirror built into the wall on his right, a rectangular table in front of him with two other unconscious people, one in front of him on the other side of the table, and the other cuffed onto the table and chained to the floor towards the smaller side to the left of the cyborg, facing the mirror.

All three of them sitting on uncomfortable chairs that are bolted to the floor. The cyborg feels his hands gripping on two different objects; in his left is a bottle of rum, his right hand had a note, "Give this toe the big guy chained to your left when he wakes up." he suspiciously reads out loud to himself accidently waking the man in front of him. "Mom, you jerk…I don't wanna go t' school." the man says as he is slowly coming to consciousness. "Wait? Wher…Where am I? WHO KIDNAPPED ME THIS TIME!" he demands.

"Sshhh, keep your voice down!" the cyborg says in a hushed tone while pointing at the chained man who, remarkably, is still sound asleep. "Who are you?" the cyborg asks.

"I'm not gonna tell no stranga' who the hell I am…especially not a machine like you!"

"I'm only part machine, numbnuts, get it right!"

"Oohhh, so your one of 'em, watchumacallits, a cyborg, eh?"

"Yeah, now keep your voice down."

"Well, I'm still not gonna tell you who I am."

"Well, from the dirty uniform that you're wearing, I'd say your some sort of troubled pilot, a reject pilot."

"Oh no you di'int'…from the looks of you, I'd say you were in some pretty messed up s**t"

The cyborg just stared at the pilot in frustration, but he couldn't come up with any sort of come back because what the pilot said was true. "So who's the rum for?" the pilot asks in a more collective tone, unknowingly waking the chained man at the far end to his right.

"D' somebody say rum?" the chained man asks as his head shoots up and looks from left to right until his eyes fall on the bottle of rum held by the cyborg. "Yo buddy, ya gotta gimme some o' that rum."

"Sure…why not." the cyborg replies as he hands the chained man the bottle and places it on the table, a bit too far from the man's reach.

"Ah, thanks man." he says as he tries to reach for the bottle, not knowing that his wrists were cuffed to the table. "Wait? What?" the man says as he looks down just to barely notice the cuffs wrapped around his wrists. "Very funny guys," he says sarcastically, "now let me go." he says in a more serious tone.

"I didn't do it." the pilot says in a hesitant tone, a little intimidated by the muscular man chained from his neck and cuffed to the table.

"Neither did I." the cyborg says in a more calm and confused tone of voice. Though as if on cue, the cuffs revolved outward into the table, relieving the man from the irritation that the cuffs caused his wrists.

"Whoa." the man was amazed at the fact the cuffs came off, a bit suspicious as if they came off on cue. "How did you do that?" he says in shock.

"It wasn't us, right?" the pilot says, asking the cyborg if he had anything to do with it.

"Eh, who cares." the man says as he tries to lean over the table to grab the rum. "My ru-" the man gags as he falls back to his seat because he failed to notice the collar chained around his neck, connecting to the floor. "AAHHH F**K! can somebody…please…pass me the rum!" he demands, frustrated at the obstacle preventing him from reaching what he considered most precious to him. Again, as if on cue, the collar unhooks itself, and falls onto the floor. "Thank you!" he says while reaching and grabbing his rum. Failing to open the bottle, he curses out of aggression that he can't get it to open regularly.

He takes a deep breath to try to calm himself down. "Does any of you two got a bottle opener?" he asks as politely as possible, with a hint of aggression still lurking in his voice. The two just shake their heads both in answer and in disappointment, "Oh well." the man says in disappointment and breaks the neck of the bottle on the edge of the table and begins to drink.

"I overheard what you guys were saying, how you two were able to size each other up," the man began, taking a few gulps of rum right after, "Ahhh, well now, it's my turn." he says as he rests his chin on his hands, leaning on the table while sitting down. He glances from the pilot to the cyborg, back and forth for a few minutes until he decided to speak. "Okay," he says in a confident manner, "Aaaahhhhh I got nothing, from what I can tell…I don't know anything about any of you guys whatsoever." he finishes.

A few minutes passed with the three men sitting by the table in dead silence glancing at each other every now and then. All three of them are startled at the sound of the door at the corner closest to the cyborg opening with two men walking through. One being in a highly decorated uniform; presumably, the captain, the other looked more like a regular civilian of the ship. "Good morning gentlemen." the highly decorated officer says in a cheerful, yet ruff voice, most likely because of his age, "I am the captain of this station, La Habra." he says as he walks towards the center between the mirror and the table.

"Hello, I am M.I.K.E.; Mission Intelligence and Knowledge Examiner." the civilian said in monotone. "You're an android. Aren't you?" the cyborg said as he scanned the android.

"Correct, I am an android, am I that obvious?" the android says as he stands next to the captain. "Curious." the android starts, "I have never seen any form of machinery that can see me for what I truly am." the android says towards the cyborg.

"That's because I'm not pure 'machinery.' I'm al-"

"My apologies," the android interrupts, "I meant no offence, I am suppose to be officially the most advanced in technology, yet your were able to notice me as an android." M.I.K.E. says.

"Well, I customized most, if not all my tech and machinery given to me after my…incident." the cyborg says hesitantly, "you can say that I am unofficially the most advanced in tech." he says proudly.

"Now I have a question," the man that was chained said, "do you always talk like that?" he asks the android, questioning it's monotone voice.

"Negative, a personality is usually installed in me depending on the location, situation, and types of my assignments. The exception being this one."

"And what might that be?"

"Getting you three to know each other." the captain interrupts.

"What!? I'm not taking no orders from nobody!" the man exclaimed as he gets up but stops when he sees the door open and a familiar face walking through the door, towards the center with the other two men standing. "Jackson?" he asks.

"That's Commanding Officer Jackson to you!"

"Sir, yes Sir!"

"What happened to ya, man, have you been drinking a lot recently?"

"No." Livewire says and takes a few gulps of rum right after.

"Still can't unlock what's inside that thick head of yours, can't you," Jackson continues, "well I suggest you follow their orders as well as mine, after all, there needs to be trust within a team."

"TEAM!?" all three exclaim in shock at the knowledge that they'll be working together even though they don't even know each other. "Well, gentlemen, we will give you a few minutes to get to know each other," the captain said, "Jackson, follow me. M.I.K.E., watch over them for me." he said as he walked out the door with Jackson following close behind.

"So," the cyborg began after the captain and the C.O. left, "Who do we start with?" he asks the android.

"I suggest we start with the pilot." the android said pointing at the man across the cyborg, "My reason being that he was the most quiet of the three of you."

"Oh. Okay. I see how it is." the pilot says, trying to act offended, "It's because I'm white, isn't it?"

"I'm guessing it's because I'm the only black guy in this room that you're saying that." the cyborg says, interrupting the pilot's pathetic outburst.

"Oh dude, I was only kidding," the pilot says trying to sound as innocent as possible, "Alright, I'm a pilot at…well…what was the U.S. Air force." He hesitates before continuing, "I'm considered the best pilot although the records say something else, but I am mostly known for being a good, I mean, best sniper."

"Show off." the man that was chained, jokingly, whispers to the cyborg.

"They call me Hawk," the pilot continues, choosing to ignore the man's comment, "after a 'stunt' I was able to pull off; I was on top of my gunship as it was still in flight and with my sniper, I took out the plane that was at my tale. Ever since I barely escaped an assassination attempt, I've been trying to find answers as to why." He takes a deep breath to calm himself down as he finishes his brief introduction, "That's it, well, that's all Imma tell you. So what's your story cyborg?"

"First off, don't call me that." the cyborg says, pointing a threatening finger at Hawk, "I am an expert in demolition, I was a part of a notorious bomb squad during the last war. My team considered me the best and tried to get me killed because of that." he pauses to think about his next choice of words, "That's how I became the "cyborg" that I am today. I was defusing a dirty bomb, not knowing that it was planted by them, when it happened. It went off by remote, thank goodness I was able to notice it could only be triggered by remote and the timer was just for show before it went off. My right arm was blown off from half of the humorous down, so it was surgically removed and replaced. My left arm was burned to such a crisp that it too had to be removed and replaced. During the time of the surgery, my commander said that I should get augmented even further. I denied it but then I was put to sleep and the doctors went on with it. Every injured organ, no matter how minor the injury, was augmented with biomechanical implants. I'm glad that it was only my heart and my lungs at the time." he shakes his head as he releases a sigh. "They call me Skillsaw because when I was called back to work, the job required to defuse a bomb inside a building that was in its finishing process of construction. I was ambushed after I defused the bomb so I retreated into a maintenance room. In there, I found a chainsaw with a full tank of gas. Let's just say that place got a new paintjob," he says with a grin, "and red is such a wonderful color."

"What about your legs?" Hawk asks, with the look on his showing that he is more than extremely interested.

"I was told I didn't "recover" correctly after the explosion that messed me up in the first place and so they replaced my legs. Everything else is working properly-"

"Yeah right," the man says, trying to act bored as he takes a gulp of his rum.

"No, they still work. My left eye, though, I wouldn't argue about being replaced, I did suffer from blunt force trauma on the left side of the skull, my eye taking most of the damage, leaving me with a scar. It was replaced with a mechanical eye. They told me that it couldn't be replaced without adding some neural implants, so they did that too."

"You said you customized your 'tech' so I am curious as to why." M.I.K.E. interrupts.

"Well my eye and a lot of my exterior tech was giving me such a hard time, I decided to add a some-some here and there." Skillsaw says in a proud tone.

"So why do you wear goggles?" the man asks mockingly.

"I wear them because the problem with my eye could not be fixed by customizing the eye itself, I had to see the same thing through both eyes so as to not get such a headache by just having my eyes open for less than an hour."

"Is that all?" the man asks and takes another sip of rum right after.

"For now." Skillsaw says, "your turn."

"Yippee," the man says sarcastically, "My name is-"

"Wait," Hawk interrupts, "it's Jack Sparro-"

"F**K THAT JACK F**KING SPARROW, IF ANYTHING, HE'S MORE LIKE ME." he takes a deep breath to calm himself down, "My name is Livewire, the U.S.M.C. gave it to me and I decided to keep it since I don't know much about my past. Anyways, it's because I usually don't follow a direct order-"

"Why?" Hawk asks him in confusion.

"Because without any rum, I get bored really easily. Anyways, like I was saying, as a grunt, I would always be put in the front lines of every assault and always come back alive, sure I was covered in bullet holes bu-"

"How are you still alive?" Hawk asks in such enthusiasm.

"I've been told by those who would answer that question for me that the 'gods have blessed me with brute strength.' I have no reason to deny it. I mean, come on, I've been shot so many times yet not once have I been fatally injured."

"Un…believable" Skillsaw says under his breath.

"I'm just a hard man to kill. I think it's because of that super soldier program I was told I signed up for. Remember you two, trying leads to a chance of failure. I can't remember much about my past so I can't really tell you much."

"Same here." Skillsaw says, "after my neural implants, I couldn't remember much about my past, the doctors told me that my memory would come back in a few days."

"And?" Livewire and Hawk ask simultaneously

"That was years ago."

"Yeah, well, um, I can't remember much either." Hawk adds in a slightly suspicious tone in which everyone else in the room detects but chose to ignore for the time being.

"What about you, android?" Livewire asks, trying to break the ice, "What's your story?"

"I infiltrate the enemy base, gather data, and plant equipment for you three for now on." the android replies in its monotone.

"So you're like a little weasel." Livewire says in a grin.

"Weasel!" all three say in acknowledgment.

"Ya' know what?" Livewire begins and takes a gulp of rum, "for now on, you shall be known as Weasel."

"I do not see any logic behind the reason as to why," the android replies, "but I shall accept this new title."

"Weasel it is." Hawk says with a smile on his face.

"So what would be our first assignment, Weasel?" Skillsaw asks.

"Your first assignment is to learn how to work as a team," Weasel replies, "you three will need to trust each other for every assignment. Therefore, your training grounds will be on enemy territory-"

"Whoa whoa, wait up. We barely know each other and you're already sending us to enemy territory." Livewire asks suspiciously.

"What if we don't make it out alive?" Hawk asks worriedly.

"I have analyzed every possible outcome," M.I.K.E. starts off, "Not one outcome has any fatal casualties on our side."

_ By "our side," does that also include we three? _Skillsaw thinks to himself.

"That's a relief." Hawk sighs. Skillsaw just assumes that Hawk is just ignorant with the other possibilities. "So when are we leaving?" Hawk continues.

"At 15;55, YOU three should be aboard the Dawning Hope." The captain interrupts as he walks in with the C.O. following. "Thanks M.I.K.E. I'll take it from here." The android just nods and leans against the wall with the mirror built into it. "The Dawning Hope will only take you partway, then you may take the Phoenix gunship the rest of the way to an enemy outpost." The captain stops at the front and center of the room with the C.O. just standing next to him. "Your primary objectives will be to infiltrate the outpost undetected, next you will locate their weapons and gather Intel on them, all while remaining undetected" He says, putting a lot of emphasis on the word "undetected" while glancing at Livewire. "Your secondary objectives will be to locate your supplies that M.I.K.E. has planted for you within the outpost; they're mostly thermite explosives meant to destroy the outpost once you've finished your recon, the rest is just your more personal supplies. Make sure to not leave a single trace of evidence indicating that you three were there. Any questions?"

"Yo, why can't Weasel do the recon if he/ it made it to and from the outpost without any trouble?" Skillsaw asks out of suspicion.

"It's a "training" assignment, your other missions won't be the same. Plus, it's not programmed in that particular field. Anything else?"

"Yeah, who will be piloting the Phoenix?" Hawk asks in anticipation.

"You are. Any other questions?" The captain asks, waiting anxiously to leave. "No? Then I'll be leaving now." He says as he walks out the door with the C.O. following him.

"Well," Livewire started after a moment of silence, "we got a few hours, might as well stock up on rum and ammo." he says as he gets up off the chair and heads for the door.

"Meet back here at 15:00 hours." M.I.K.E. says before Livewire left. "As for the rest of you, get your gear ready."


	4. Chapter 3

Project: Fenrir

** July 11, 2172 12:47**

** Prep/Equipment Room**

** LA HABRA**

** Preparation for field training/recon**

The three of them were preparing themselves for their first assignment in the same large room filled with weapons, gadgets, vehicles, and ammunition. They stayed quiet for the first few minutes after arriving around 12:40, for none of them wanted to speak to another.

"So, what'd you got there?" Livewire decided to break the ice by asking Skillsaw about his gear while working on his own weaponry.

"Remember that chainsaw I talked about?" Skillsaw responds blankly.

"Yeah."

"I found a way to attach it to my right arm by the wrist. I'm just trying to make the chain spin faster."

"I can do that."

"Oh really?" Skillsaw doubted someone like Livewire was capable of making such an accomplishment.

"Yeah, just give me a few hours and I'll make it run more than ten times the fastest chainsaw."

Skillsaw was impressed at Livewire's confidence, but doubt still lurked in his mind. "Alright," Skillsaw hesitated as he detaches the small compartment that held the chainsaw from his arm, "I'm trusting you with one of my most precious possessions." he hands Livewire the compartment whom received and handled the compartment with most delicate of care.

Skillsaw pulls out his revolver from a holster hanging in the opened locker in front of him while Livewire inspected and began working on his saw. "So what are you going to bring on this assignment?" he asks Livewire, "I mean, besides all the gear we should bring."

"I know whatcha mean," Livewire grinned, "Imma bring my trusty revolver and my knife." he says with a hint of pride in his voice. "Oh, and the rum. You can't never forget to leave the rum." he smirks.

"Will you be sober enough to survive?" Skillsaw asked, concerned of Livewire's drinking problem which only results in a burst of laughter from Livewire.

"Are you kidding?" Livewire puts an arm over Skillsaw's shoulder, pulling him closer and bringing him lower as if to speak in a whisper. "I fight better when I drink. You?"

"I don't drink." Skillsaw gently releases himself from Livewire's grasp.

"No, not that." Livewire almost sounded disappointed. "I meant, what'r you gonna bring?"

"Oh." Skillsaw almost felt foolish but regained his composure and responded. "I'm bringing my revolver and a shotgun." his response lead to Livewire raising a brow at him as if to ask if he was finished, "Oh, and my chainsaw when you're done with it. What about you, Hawk?"

"What?" Hawk was too delved into his work that he didn't hear the question.

"What are you bringing?" Skillsaw and Livewire responded almost in unison.

"Oh, I'm bringing my customized-suppressed SOMd12, 12d14 Titan, and my Anti-Material sniper rifle." Hawk smiles.

"So a suppressed side arm, an assault rifle, and a heavy sniper." Skillsaw ponders aloud.

"The sniper is for emergencies." Hawk added, "You'll never know when you gonna need one."

"The recoil on that sniper must be a b***h to handle, eh?" Livewire was trying to hide how impressed that someone as, what he would consider scrawny, could handle such a powerful weapon.

"Yeah." Hawk agreed but decided to continue to answer their first question. "I also got a thermal scope attached to it." he remarked.

"It might actually come in handy later on today." says Skillsaw.

"It should, shouldn't it?" Hawk replies without a doubt. Skillsaw and Livewire just give a slight nod and continue with what they were doing.

** July 11, 2172 13:30**

A man stands behind the window of his office, overlooking the vast city of a space station. He pulls out a cigarette and a lighter. He's about to light it when his office phone starts to ring. He stops for a second then continues to light his cigarette, taking a few puffs of smoke before answering the phone by putting it on speaker.

"Hello?" he asks.

"I hope you know what you're doing." a female voice says on the speaker.

"I do." he replies in a cool fashion.

"And what of their memories?"

"Two don't know of their pasts-"

"And of the third?" she interrupts.

"He's only worried about one thing."

"His sister?"

"Yes."

"Is she a threat to you project?"

"My sources say not."

"What do you think?"

"What I think doesn't matter, but I'll tell you this, I will keep a close eye on them."

"And what of your android?"

"M.I.K.E? He's following his programming perfectly."

"He?"

"IT!"

"So when will your project be in affect?"

"Soon" he takes a puff of smoke, "Very soon."

** July 11, 2172 14:55**

** Corridors**

** LA HABRA**

** En route to briefing room**

"Livewire, Hawk, and Skillsaw. Please report to the briefing room." echoed down the halls from speakers attached to various walls.

"I hate it when they use the speaker." says Livewire annoyed as the trio walked with their packs strapped over their shoulders.

"At least this chick sounds kinda hot." Hawk tried to cheer up Livewire.

"Livewire, are you always upset before an assignment?" Skillsaw asks rather calmly so as to not stir up any tensions between any of them.

"Only when I don't have enough to drink." Livewire responds blankly.

"There should be a bar in the Dawning Hope." Hawk suggests

"What if it doesn't?" Livewire was beginning to get infuriated.

"Then get a quick drink after we're done with the briefing." says Skillsaw, trying to calm Livewire down.

"Ugh, alright." Livewire gives in. "Oh, and before I forget." he reaches into his pack and pulls out the compartment Skillsaw gave him to upgrade only it seemed almost cleaner; in a black, perfectly polished state.

"Wow," Skillsaw says as he takes it and looks it over in astonishment. He places it on his right arm and erects the chain guard to its full length, which was about a yard starting from the tip of his knuckles, and inspects the teeth, noticing the polished state each tooth was in.

"Well don't just look at it." Livewire interrupts Skillsaw's concentration, "Start 'er up."

Skillsaw started the chain, taking notice that the sound of the engine was somehow dampened to the point where no noise could be heard but the soft sound of clinkering metal of the teeth on the chain. "I thought you said it will go faster." he said almost disappointingly.

"Give it a moment." Livewire says almost irritated. In a matter of seconds, the sound gradually softened until nothing can be heard from the chainsaw, only a soft high-pitch-like whistle from the teeth cutting through the wind. Soon after that, the chain began to glow in an almost bright red color from so much heat caused by the speed. "It should start like that from here-on-out." he smiles proudly at his achievement.

"Should?" Skillsaw asks, suspiciously raising a brow at Livewire.

"Yeah, b***h, it should!" Livewire responds defensively. He takes a deep breath to calm his nerves. "Just keep it clean and it WILL."

"Why are we going back to briefing?" Hawk asks, trying to break the quarreling pair. "Weren't we already briefed?"

"They probably have something new for us." Skillsaw suspiciously replies.

"Well we're about to find out now." Livewire says as they stop in front of the door to the briefing room.

They enter the same room they were in earlier in the morning. Everything was the same as it was when they left, including M.I.K.E. just standing in the same place. The only difference was the chains that held Livewire were gone.

"Afternoon, Weasel." Hawk informally salutes the android.

"Good afternoon, Hawk." M.I.K.E. said in his usual monotone. "If you three may please take your seats, we will begin in a moment." The three of them sat down in the same place they were in the morning and M.I.K.E. started to speak again, "You three have been chosen for this special project." he began, "You are the elite, the best of the best. It is because of that reason, the government has decided to supply you with the best equipment to compliment your abilities and unique skills in the field." he pauses for a moment. "Open doors."

The three of them wore confused looks on their faces at the android's last comment. A few seconds later, there was a loud hiss as the air-pressured, built-in doors on the walls behind each of the three started to rise. In them were weapons, tools, and other special gadgetry.

Hawk and the other two get to their doors to see what was in store for them. Hawk picks up a baton like object, as he further inspects it, he notices a button above the hilt. His curiosity entices him to press it. When he did, two curved blades erected at opposite sides, forming the shape of a battle axe. Through the reflection of one of the blades, he sees that his irises have changed to an almost orange color. He smiled with pride at his new weapon, ignoring the fact that his eyes changed color.

At the same time, Livewire was lost in amazement at the collection of blades and belts of ammunition, including packs of explosives, neatly scattered about. He picks up a machete, observing every detail on the blade. It was a stain-less steel blade attached to a silver hilt wrapped in leather. He holds it in front of him as if he found his holy grail.

Something catches Skillsaw's attention out of the corner of his eye, he finds a grapple gun. Inscribed on it says GLEIPNIR and he takes it and places it in its rightful place in his belt. He looks over the ammunition and one in particular caught his eye. He picked up a box of .357 revolver ammo labeled GUNGNIR and he inspected the labeling further. He was astonished at seeing how the ammunition can track and eliminate a target.

"On the very bottom, you all will find your armor to fit you and only you for your upcoming assignment." M.I.K.E. said after a moment of observing their reaction toward their new gear.

Skillsaw Admired his armor; a light-weight black body piece with an insignia of a wolf's head above the left breast and under it was inscribed in an unusual font, FENRIR for his armor didn't have sleeves.

Everyone else's armor had the same insignia with "Fenrir" written under it, only it was located on the left shoulder of the armor. Livewire's armor looked more like a leather jacket than armor, the only significant difference is that it seemed to look like it was a tight fit, but Livewire wore it comfortably. Hawk's armor was a full body army, a helmet too; fit for a sniper of his caliber. It looked rather heavy though, but to him, it fit as if it were just another layer of clothing, although to everyone else, it looked rather bulky. He performed a couple of stretches as a test to see how flexible his armor was and surprised that his armor didn't even restrict any of his movements at all.

Skillsaw placed a belt filled with nothing but small explosives over his right shoulder: diagonally crossing his chest; a belt of .357 Gungnir rounds: around his waist; a belt of phosphorous shotgun cartridges over his left shoulder: diagonally crossing his chest to form an 'X' across his front side. He picked up his revolver and admired it for a while, spinning the cylinder and then holstering it to the left of his waist so that it would hang above his left thigh. He saw a strange shaped pistol being held by two hooks, only instead of a normal handle, it had a stock, it almost looked like a desert eagle, only that the barrel was a little longer. Engraved on the side of the barrel, was the shape of a Chinese dragon with an open snout at the tip of the barrel. He turns it over and sees a mirrored engraving on the exact opposite side of the barrel. He holds the stock in his right hand and pulls the barrel down with his left to reveal that the gun was actually a single-shot shotgun. _Typical _he thinks to himself _I should 'a known they wouldn't keep a gun loaded behind a door. _He loads one of the phosphorous rounds left over in a box on a shelf, sharply tilts the gun upward, and the barrel clicks into its ready position. _Breath of the Dragon _he thinks as he holsters it on the right side of his waist so that it hangs above his right thigh and smiles with joy at all the gear he had received.

Meanwhile, Livewire was already pleased just at the sight of the weaponry behind his door. He places a belt of spiked pipe bombs over his left shoulder, not paying any mind to the spikes, for they didn't even pierce through his armor. He placed another belt, of .55 rounds for his revolver over his right shoulder, paralleled to the belt at his left, and another belt of the same ammunition around his waist. He held up his revolver and span the cylinder as well before he holstered it under the armor on his left side. He pulls out his machete and kneels down to view any other blades that might be displayed on the lower shelves. He stood back up, after a moment of being on a knee, and smiles, proud at the fact that no other blade went above his standards that could replace his machete. He holsters his blade upward unlike how other blades were holstered onto the back, concealing it under his armor as well.

Hawk, on the other hand, was struggling with putting on his armor, but soon got the hang of it. His armor made him look slightly bulky for man of his build, with pockets for ammo almost everywhere and he leaves his helmet on the table for the time being. He picks up an empty ammunition belt and fills each pocket with rounds for his anti-material rifle until something caught his eye. He sees a shelf neatly lined up with sniper scopes and he checks everyone of them. He disappointingly places each one back on the shelf until he reached the last scope, "Odin's Eye," he says under his breath, reading the inscription on the side of the scope. He closely looks at all the scope's features and is finally impressed at what he held in his hands. He quickly removes the scope from his sniper and replaces it with his new one. He puts the belt of his sniper ammo diagonally over his right shoulder and filled half of his pockets with magazines for his side arm and the other half with magazines for his assault rifle. He holsters his side arm on the right side of his waist so that it hangs over his right thigh, he holsters his sniper rifle behind his right shoulder, and straps his assault over his left shoulder.

The three of them turn and stand by the sides of the table, observing each other and each other's gear.

"Here are your personal communicators." M.I.K.E. says after a small moment of silence. "You will have no connections to home base on this assignment. You will be alone. The Dawning Hope Will take you a quarter of the way, then Hawk will pilot the Phoenix to the train station. From there, you'll hijack a military grade train and ride it to the Munin Communications Station."

"And what about our ride back?" asks Livewire.

"You will use the same train, the Rhino, on your way back." M.I.K.E. replies.

"I'm going on a limb here when I say that we have to do all this 'Undetected.'" Hawk sarcastically points out.

"Affirmative. Any other questions?" M.I.K.E. asks, but no one decides to ask anything further. "Well, in that case, you better take your communicators and the rest of your gear for the Dawning Hope will be leaving in a few minutes."

The three of them grab their gear and rush out the door, heading straight for the hanger bay. The group anxiously walk down the corridors toward the hanger while the two-minute countdown began.

"There's our ride." Livewire comes to an abrupt halt, causing the two behind him to barely avoid collision with one another. "I'm gonna go get me a drink. Ya guys want anything?"

"I'll take a-" Hawk was cut off when Skillsaw elbows him in the gut.

"I don't think we have the time for this." Skillsaw tried to reason with the brute.

"C'mon, what's the hurry?"

"We've got less than two minutes to get on that ship."

"And your point is?"

"My point is that you won't be able to find a bar, get your drink, and be onboard before the final countdown." Skillsaw was at the brink of screaming.

"Hmm…good point." Livewire puts a hand to his chin as if to ponder on Skillsaw's words.

"Thank you!"

"You owe me." Livewire aggressively continues walking towards the colonizing ship when he heard all three communicators simultaneously give a small vibration. He places it on his right ear with Hawk and Skillsaw following his example. Livewire flicks the small switch on the communicator to answer it. "Hello?" he asks suspiciously."Livewire, Skillsaw, and Hawk, do you copy?"

"We copy." they answered almost in unison.

"You three are to report to room Delta 3 4-Henry Tango, the files concerning your mission will be waiting for you there. As of now, Project: Fenrir is in effect. Good luck Fenrir."

"Wait!" Hawk demands, "Who is this?" All he received as a reply was just static. All three of them looked at each other with confused looks on their faces of what happened, wondering if they should follow through with the order.

They boarded the Dawning Hope.


	5. Chapter 4

Nightmares and Ghost Ships

** July 11, 2172 23:47**

** Room D34-TH**

** Dawning Hope**

** Project: FENRIR**

After unpacking their gear, the trio started to settle down in their somewhat large apartment. The interior of the apartment was a grayish color with the carpet and lights being the only thing to add color to make the place seem more homely. The apartment had enough rooms for each one of them to have their own privacy with one to spare and one bathroom and every other basic necessity for an average apartment. Out of the three, Hawk was the first to settle down his equipment in his room; moving about the room in exhaustion to the point where he felt he could pass out in any minute. Livewire, on the other hand, seemed more willing to stay awake and fought with himself to accomplish the goal even though he was tired and exhausted himself. Skillsaw noticed this when he overheard Livewire next-door grunting in all effort to remain awake and wanted to get Livewire to rest as soon as possible so he could rest as well.

"Livewire, You should really rest." Skillsaw said as he entered Livewires room. Livewire was sitting up on the edge of his bed facing the doorway where Skillsaw stood. "We don't know how long we have 'til we leave aboard the Phoenix."

"I don't sleep without having a drink first." Livewire responded aggressively.

"Didn't ya pack some rum before we left La Habra?"

Livewire stood up in a display of dominance. "That's for emergencies!"

Skillsaw wasn't fazed by his remark because he didn't want to raise anymore tension than what was already there. "Alright, tell ya what. I'll get you your drink if you at least try to settle down. How 'bout that?"

"Just hurry it up." Livewire yawns and lies down on his bed. With that, Skillsaw leaves Livewire's room and exits their apartment. Livewire never realized that relaxing was going to result into a big mistake. _Don't sleep. _he thought to himself as his eyes began to droop. _You can't sleep, not now! _Slowly, his eyes closed and Livewire fell into a deep slumber. "D***it" his whisper was the last sound he heard before he fell asleep.

Tossing and turning in his bed, Livewire was sweating and almost hyperventilating; mumbling in his sleep.

_ Strapped onto a slanted operating table, Livewire looks up at an overhanging, flickering light bulb. Scared out of his mind at the sense of familiarity, he began to panic. "Whe…where am I?"he says in such a fretful voice. He looks around the dimly lit room to notice that the ceiling was covered in blood, causing the illusion of the walls looking as if they were bleeding and looks down to see that floor was buried in a pool of blood. It was then that he noticed the stench of blood with a hint of iron. "N…n…no…no…NO! not again. Not right now. It can't be." he says as he struggles to set himself free from the bindings. He freezes all of a sudden at the sound similar to that of a cleaver chopping thick meat. He hears it again and snaps his head to the right, facing a hallway he assumed the sound was coming from. He hears it again and again, snapping his head to the other side and screams out of fear, "LET ME OUT!"_

_ The straps come off as if following his command. He falls knee-deep in the pool of blood and checks himself to see if he contributed any blood to the pool. He stands up straight, placing a hand on his throbbing head as it pounds in agony in the same time as his heart beat to an unwanted and unknown flashback._

_ "These things take time." a scratchy timid voice said._

_ "What is wrong?" another man said in a tone that demanded respect._

_ "Well, it suffered from severe blunt force trauma to the head, so holding it together will be difficult."_

_ "So what did you do?"_

_ "What I could do. I have placed stakes around his skull to keep it together and in place on his spinal cord " he says remorsefully._

_ "Any issues with the-" he clears his throat "Implantations?"_

_ He sighs "No, but he's afraid to see anything."_

_ "You sound like you have already solved this issue." he takes a brief pause, "Though, I am curious as to how?"_

_ "Well, at first I didn't know what else to do. I panicked so I just placed a sack over his head."_

_ "You sound troubled about it."_

_ "Well, I am rather confused at the fact that he tore eye holes on the sack even though he's afraid to see."_

_ "So, then what did you do about it?"_

_ "I sewed his eyes shut with the sack over his head. I figured that it would be more work to remove the stakes and the sack, then place the stakes back on again."_

_ "And you call me a monster for experimenting on it."_

_ "IT, was alive at one point in time."_

_ "And it will again soon."_

_ He sighs, "I've wiped it's memory and removed the vital internal organs you've listed."_

_ "Good. Let me see it."_

_ "I…i…it's not finished yet."_

_ "I want to SEE it, doctor." he demanded._

_ "Fine." he sighs._

_ A moment passed before either spoke again._

_ "Wow, doctor. And are those blades steel?"_

_ "Yes, each limb was amputated from the joints and replaced with stainless-steel blades."_

_ "And what about the super soldier project?"_

_ "Well, our experiment volunteered after this one went M.I.A. Both of them are Marines. except this one is still breathing."_

_ "Have you done what I've asked for with him."_

_ "I have tried to do as you've asked but the human mind, especially Repreza's, can't simply have their memories erased. I've tried my best, though, to keep his memory completely locked away." he says doubtfully._

_ "What are you afraid of?"_

_ "There is a chance his memories will leak and little by little, he'll remember."_

_ "Relax, doctor. I am certain our projects will be successful."_

_ "Yes, Master."_

_Livewire slowly returns to consciousness as his flashback fades away. As soon as he regains all his senses, he quickly held his breath at the realization that his body was spread across the floor and under the pool of blood. He gags and gargles as he struggles to lift his head above the surface of the thick liquid as fast as possible. He gasps for air as soon as he could, spitting whatever remains of blood was left in his mouth, cringed at the taste of iron that resided in his mouth. _

_ The shrieking sound of a man in pain echoed down the halls all of a sudden and Livewire quickly turned to face the direction of where the sound came from. After a long tense moment, Livewire began to think that it was just his imagination until he heard it again, only this time, it was getting louder and longer than before. _

_ "Aw crap!" Livewire panicked, quickly looking for a place to hide in the infirmary that he was held in. After realizing that there was no way someone like him could hide in a place like this, he decided to run. The thick blood filled halls slowed him down but he was determined to escape whatever horrid nightmare awaited him around the corners. After a few minutes of running without a sense of direction, Livewire quickly comes to an abrupt halt at the sight of a creature that stood only about one-hundred yards down the narrow hallway, littered with boxes, papers, and tipped over racks. He realized the creature looked humanoid, only that halfway down the limbs, it was completely removed and replaced with what looked like blades of some sort; the dim lighting not allowing Livewire to make an accurate observation. The creature stood on all fours, balancing itself on its blades, looking as if it were hunting for a certain prey. Livewire was having a difficult time deciding whether to face it head on or to try and gain some distance from this creature. Without thinking, he ran down the opposite direction of the hallway, breaking down doors to enter hallways after hallways. He ran and ran through the labyrinth of blood, desperately looking for an exit. He stops after a while to catch his breath as his adrenaline was beginning to dampen and began to walk. Out of the corner of his eye, he catches a glimpse of a shadow, the silhouette of the creature looked side to side as it searched for him. "S**t, this b***h is close." Livewire gasped and regretted opening his mouth when he saw the shadow stop moving and raising its head to release another ear-piercing shriek. Livewire clutches his head, trying to cover his ears from the devastating sound as it made him bleed from eyes, nose and ears. Like a spider, the creature quickly moved through the blood bath to reach Livewire. In his last desperate attempt of escape, Livewire began to sprint, not caring if he made a sound or if he was heading the wrong direction. He looks behind him as he ran to see how far the creature was and time seemed to begin to slow down as he saw the creature jump into the air to pounce its prey. Livewire turns in attempt to face this creature only to get tackled into the pull of blood with the steel-bladed arms of the creature through his chest. _

_ Livewire struggled to lift his head above the surface of the blood to avoid being drowned by the creature as it held him by the chest. Livewire screamed, not out of pain, but out of fear of the sight before him. The creature's hide was covered in stitches, giving it a zombie-like appearance, it's head was covered by a ragged sack with its eyes sewn shut and a mouth hole torn through the sack. It screams in retaliation, Livewire seeing the jaw stretch farther the longer the creature shrieked. It pulls its right arm from Livewire's chest and slashes him across the face, leaving a bloody gash openly gushing out blood. Livewire stood petrified before the creature, not moving whatsoever, only screaming and grunting against the pain it inflicted upon him. _

_ The creature slashes him across the face. "Wake up, Livewire. Wake up!" The creature says in a demonic voice. Livewire, although in pain, was confused at his attacker's words. "Wake up!" it says, this time it had a more familiar voice. It raises its arm for the killing blow and strikes Livewire once more. _

_ "Wake_ up! Wake up!" said the familiar voice. Livewire immediately opens his eyes and notices two black, metallic arms holding him. He looks up and sees a worried Skillsaw sighing in relief.

"What the f**k, man-" Livewire exclaims in surprise, "What the f**k happened to you?"

"I was trying to get you to wake up. You loo-"

"SHUT UP! Just… just shut the f**k up." Livewire sighs to try to calm himself down.

"What happened?" Skillsaw tries to get Livewire to calm down.

"I didn't have my drink, b***h. That's what happened." Livewire was still on the defense and wouldn't back down easily.

"Your rum?" Skillsaw tries to keep his voice low to avoid another mess. "Yeah, it's on the night table right next to you."

Livewire looks to his side. With wide eyes, he notices the large bottle of rum on the night table. "Thanks" He quickly grabs it and starts to drink the beverage.

"You alright, man?"

"D***it, man. All that s**t seemed real." Livewire says after a large gulp.

"Legs soaking?" Skillsaw begins to explain. "Face hurting? You being restrained? Chest hurt 'n?"

Livewire nodded after every question as he continued to drink. "Yeah. How'd ya know?"

"When I came back, your blankets were tight on you. I accidentally spilled a glass of water on you a bit. Hawk was already here saying that you'll wake up from your night terror by inflicting pain so he twisted your nipples and started slapping you a bit to wake you up too. I pushed him off and pulled you up and socked you across the face and you finally woke up." Livewire wore a perplexed look on his face at the end of Skillsaw's explanation.

"Wait wait wait. Are you telling me Hawk twisted my nipples and slapped me?" Livewire began to rub his chest.

"Yeah." Skillsaw was on a verge of bursting into laughter.

"Where is he." Livewire almost sounded threateningly joking.

"After I pulled him off to wake you myself, he ran away to not get his tail kicked." Skillsaw snickered. "You okay?" He almost sounded worried.

"Yeah, why?" Livewire tried to hide what was bothering him.

Skillsaw didn't want to push him any further so he decided to play along. "Well, for one, you looked like if you were dying and two, we got a problem."

"What kind of problem?"

"The captain of this ship wants a special ops team to investigate an "abandoned" ship a few clicks away."

"And he asked for us." Livewire stood up.

"No"

"What?" Livewire felt insulted at the thought that he was forced to join a group that wouldn't be considered skilled enough for a special operation.

"Nobody knows who we are." Skillsaw reminded Livewire, hoping to calm him down. "Not even ourselves. Only our superiors."

"And your point is?"

"Hawk and I have a reason to believe it's a trap; formed by the terrorists group."

"So what are we gonna do? Sit here and wait to get ourselves caught."

"We are gonna disguise ourselves as that spec-ops team."

"How?" Livewire became interested all of a sudden.

"Hawk and I non-lethally eliminated the spec-ops team headed to the bridge and brought 'em here unnoticed. we will disguise ourselves in their uniforms and take the mission for ourselves."

"Lame. I would have killed them instead." Livewire kidded.

Skillsaw decided to ignore the joke. "Well we wouldn't want the smell to attract any attention. Now do we?"

"When are we going?" Livewire was beginning to get bored.

"Now."

"So early in the morning?"

"C'mon big guy. It's only o' four-hundred hours" Skillsaw smirked. "Get your gear ready. we gotta be at the bridge in thirty minutes."

"Fine." Livewire said before Skillsaw was out of earshot when he left him alone to get ready. Livewire sat on the edge of his bed, pondering about his nightmare. _Why does this thing always haunt my dreams? _He asks himself. He finishes the rum Skillsaw brought him and got up to stretch his stiffened muscles and joints. When he looked over his bed toward the footlocker where his gear was, he noticed that Skillsaw had left Livewire's disguise with the rest of the gear.

After a while, Skillsaw walked out of his room to see an anxious Hawk leaning against the wall next to the door with a leg. "So how's Livewire doing?" Hawk tries to sound calm.

Skillsaw just smirks before replying. "He knows what you did if that's what you're asking."

Hawk releases a sigh to settle his nerves. "No. Seriously; is he alright?"

"He's still a bit shaky but he's too stubborn to show it." Skillsaw releases a sigh as well. "Hey, if what he says is true, then he'll be fine after a drink." Skillsaw tried to cheer Hawk up.

"You set for the assignment?" Hawk asks as he eyed the equipment Skillsaw was wearing.

"Yeah." Skillsaw seemed to be angered at something. "Worse thing being that no one will know we did it."

"You sound as if you know we'll complete it and come out alive." Hawk felt a sense of remorse.

"You sound as if you doubt yourself." Skillsaw's remark caused Hawk to flinch as if he were slapped. "Look... I don't know how, but I just know we will."

** July 12, 2172 04:27**

** Bridge**

** DAWNING HOPE**

** Fenrir en route to investigate a "Ghost Ship"**

** Project: FENRIR**

"Captain?" Skillsaw asks beneath his disguise. The group wore predominantly white armor with a touch of black for the joints here and there. Each of their disguises came with helmets as well, each being significantly different due to customizations the actual owners have made.

"Ah, you three must be the team I asked for." The highly decorated officer said as he removed the antique pipe from his mouth. Something about his attitude struck a note of anger in Skillsaw. "Good. you Three will board that ship using the gunship, Phoenix." Hawk's muscles tensed at the sound of that gunship's name. "Investigate the ship, search for anything useful, and return it. Is that understood?"

"Yes, SIR!" Hawk's voice slightly startled Livewire and Skillsaw.

"I am surprised to see that a spec-ops personnel still has manners. They're usually pretty cocky." The captain suspiciously peered at Hawk, almost as if he was trying to look through the faceplate-visor.

"That would be my fault-" Livewire places a hand on Hawk's shoulders, tightening his grip to get his point through before any other suspicions could arise. "-Still gotta show this newbie the ropes."

"Please do so." The captain rolled his eyes sarcastically as he turned his back on them, giving them their leave.

The trio turned and walked out of the bridge, heading towards the hanger.

"The f**k is your f***ing?" Livewire scolded Hawk, feeling that Hawk almost blew their cover.

"My problem?" Hawk acted surprised at Livewire's question. "That b***h, Cap 'n Crunch, or whatever the h**l his name is, assigned MY SHIP to whoever the h**l the f***ing we're disguised in."

"And your point is?" Livewire was about to shove Hawk but Skillsaw interfered.

"My point is that "Phoenix" is my ship and-"

"Will you two stop your bickering!" Skillsaw demanded in a harsh whisper to bring any attention. "Our cover will be blown unless you two shut your traps and deal with the situation at hand!" The two were surprised that Skillsaw would speak in such a tone at them. "Livewire, drink something to calm yourself. And you, Hawk, we don't exist so technically that ship doesn't belong to you." Skillsaw seemed to be on the verge of hyperventilating from all the anger he exerted from trying to keep them quiet.

"Fine. Let's just get this s**t done." Hawk said. Deep down, surrendering himself to the truth while shoving past Skillsaw.

The three of them continued walking toward the hanger in complete silence for a few minutes until they finally reached their destination. Upon entering the hanger, they slowed their pace to a mere halt when seeing how empty the place looked. Not a single man, woman, or child in sight. The only things that were there were piles of crates here and there, ships of all shapes and sizes scattered about. A couple of forklifts, bright lights hanging overhead, and a few cranes as well.

"So-" Livewire broke the silence by clearing his throat. "Where is she?" he asks as he scanned the area.

"She?" Skillsaw asks, somewhat amused at Livewire's comment.

"The Phoenix ya dumb**s. What'd ya think I was talk 'n about?"

"Nothing." Skillsaw chuckles under his breath. "Let's just find that ship."

Unknowing to the two of them, Hawk had already broke off from the group and headed straight for the ship. "Found her." his yell echoed throughout the hanger. "I'll start her up."

"Nice job." Skillsaw said through his mic. "Oh and uh…Hawk…I think it's best to stick with the communicators from here on out. Just to keep our cover from getting blown, alright?"

"Copy that." Hawk responded over the mic. "Starting her up now."

"Livewire." Skillsaw brought Livewire out of his daydream. "Would you rather deal with the electronic defenses or get the hanger doors open."

"You look like the kind of b*****d to get the electronic stuff down. I'll get the doors." Livewire said with a hint of sarcasm in his tone.

The two of them split to cover each of their objectives. Skillsaw having a hard time trying to find the security room. _Where the heck is it. _he thought, frustrated at the assumption that the other two could be done by now and he's holding them back until he spotted a room closer towards the ceiling. Skillsaw draws out his Gleipnir and takes aim at a railing above the roof of the room. _I hope this works _he thinks to himself as he pulls the trigger. The tri-claw tip attached to the strong black wire, ejected from the barrel and gripped onto the railing Skillsaw was aiming at. He feels a small tug as the long wire straightened itself out. Curiously, he analyzes his gun to see what was wrong with his mechanical eye and realized that he had to release the trigger to be pulled toward his direction. Without bracing himself, he lets go of the trigger with only a split second to regret not preparing himself to be shot into the air with such tremendous force. His heart rate began to spike, forcing him into a state of adrenaline in which he moved at such speed that everything around him seemed to be going at a slow pace. To him, he had more than enough time to think about his next move. He presses the button to release the hook and retract it back into the barrel of the gun. As the hook was returning, he lands on top of the roof of the room he assumed was the security room. He scans the insides of the room through the roof. After knowing for a fact that it was empty, he erects his saw just enough to go through the roof. He stabs his saw through the roof slowly but smoothly, amazed at how clean of a cut the saw could now make. He cut out a hole big enough for him to go through and drops in, making as little noise as possible.

After a short while of searching in the dark, he finds the computer he was looking for and takes a seat close to it. He starts up his hacking tool on his left arm which made a low hum, a sound with a frequency so low that it can't be easily heard by the naked ear. The device then started to release three tentacle-like wires towards the direction of his hand. They quickly attached themselves in the computer and a red holographic screen was projected from the device. Skillsaw hacked into the computer in a matter of seconds, after finishing the hacking process, he turned on the monitor through the hacking device and unplugged himself from the computer. On the computer, he found the security programming and files. Realizing how advanced the programming was, he plugged himself back into the computer and loaded encrypted data into the computer for the security program to read.

"Access granted." the computer said after the file Skillsaw loaded into it was read. Skillsaw smiles proudly for his accomplishment although deep down inside he knew it wasn't much of a challenge to begin with.

"I got it." Skillsaw said over the com link.

"What exactly did you get?" Hawk asked

"I entered our DNA into the security system."

"YOU DID WHAT!" Livewire exclaimed in an angered yet hushed voice.

"Relax, Livewire. Only the security system can identify us, no one else."

"How does it work?" Hawk was beginning to get interested.

"Simple: every eye, fingerprint, or DNA scan will read us as a guest." He chuckles "We even have a higher clearance than the captain of the Dawning Hope."

"So we have more access to the ship than the captain?" Livewire asked with a devilish grin spreading across his face.

"Yeah." Skillsaw began to feel that he was being doubted. "If you don't believe me, use your bio-scan."

"Bio-scan?"

"Yeah, it's standard issue for all personnel; civilian or military."

"Is that what this red card that looks like a CPU is?" Livewire asked as he was waving what he just described in the air as if Skillsaw could see it.

"Yeah. There should be a slit for the card to enter."

Livewire takes a look at his card and placed it in the slit at the corner of the control panel he was standing in front of. As soon as the card clicked into the slit, the button to open the hanger doors started to blink. "Ya sonovab***h." Livewire says out loud to himself as he presses the button. "Skillsaw, I'll meet ya at the Phoenix. Hawk, ya better have 'er ready by the time I get there." he says through the communicator as he takes a sip of rum from one of his silver flasks while he took his sweet time to get to the ship.

** July 12, 2172 05:47**

** Cockpit**

** PHOENIX**

** Fenrir en route to GHOST SHIP**

** Project: Fenrir**

"Wow, somebody's excited." Skillsaw leans towards Livewire in a whisper after noticing the big smile on Hawk's face after removing their helmets.

"Well no s**t." Hawk said after overhearing Skillsaw, "This is my ship now B****ES!" Hawk said humorously.

"So how did we come across this ghost ship?" Livewire asked, putting emphasis on the subject, after taking another sip of rum.

"Don't know." Skillsaw replied before Hawk could respond. "You think we can ask?" He too was curious as to how the ship came by.

"I'll patch us through to the captain." Hawk said as he assumed what was going to be asked of him.

"Just make sure it's just the audio feed." Livewire said calmly. "We don't want them to know who we are by showing them what we look like."

"Got it." Hawk began to flip a couple of switches before speaking again. "Captain of the Dawning Hope, this is the pilot of the Phoenix, we have a few questions."

"This is the captain speaking. Ask your questions, pilot."

"How did you come across this ghost ship?"

The captain sighed, hoping that the team wouldn't be one to be asking questions and would just follow orders. "There was a disturbance detected on the radar. I asked to get a visual on what was going on and I saw what I would call an ethereal phenomena that made the area in front of the Dawning Hope seem to warp into some kind of wormhole which at first was a bright light and then the ship was shot straight out of it. It came toward us at such great speed but was beginning to decelerate to a halt just before it hit us." Static was beginning to interfere as the Phoenix was getting closer to the ghost ship. "We…ed…unkn…phenom…ccuring…the…ship. Tha…what you have…investi-"

"Captain? Captain. CAPTAIN!" Hawk almost seemed to begin to panic. "D***it, we lost signal."

"Could it be from the ship." Skillsaw suggested.

"I dunno, Skillsaw. I just don't know."

** July 12, 2127 03:47**

"I have to congratulate you on you progress." The same stranger of a woman said from the speaker of the phone belonging to the same stranger of a man.

"Why, thank you. I am glad to see that it worked as well."

"Your new teleportation device will make space-travel more time saving, instead of using those stargate portals."

"Yes, but it's still in its prototype form. I'll have my scientists fix up the bugs."

"Please do so. I'd hate to get my particles rearranged in the wrong way." She sighs, "Anyways, how's your project coming along?"

"Project: Fenrir is coming along just fine. I just feel a sense of remorse for the crew on the ship I experimented on."

"And why is that."

"Almost every life on that ship has perished."

"Is something wrong with the ship."

"We'll soon find out as soon as they take the bait."

"Bait?"

"Yes. I plan on having all my errors permanently erased."

"Is that all your project is for?" the women began to sound annoyed.

"No. I plan on using their successes to pass another."

"Another?" she was beginning to get frustrated at the thought that this mysterious man was getting too far ahead of himself. "You haven't finished this and you're already planning on another?"

"Yes. So long as they don't know who exactly we are." The man took a deep breath to remain calm.

"Is that fear I'm hearing?" she teased.

"No." he snapped. "But that kind of knowledge is extremely crucial to my plans."

"All this work better be worth it."

"Don't worry. It will all come together in the end."

"I'm having a hard time believing you."

"You said the same thing about my teleportation device."

"Touché."

He sighed before continuing. "You worry too much, my dear. It will accomplish many things."

"Like what?"

"Let's just say that we will soon be in control of everything."

"Everything?"

"Yes." He takes a puff of smoke. "Everything."

** July 12, 2172 06:05**

** Hanger**

** "GHOST SHIP"**

** Investigation led by Fenrir**

** Project: Fenrir**

"The lights are out." Livewire mutters out loud, "Dayam its dark in here." he says upon exiting the Phoenix.

"Do ya mind?" Hawk asks timidly, "Keep your voice down, Livewire." Hawk seemed fretful at the sight of the interior of the hanger. Because of the darkness, the walls seemed to be emanating an ominous green glow in the gloomy shadows. Rusted walls throughout the ship, electrical wires sparking while hanging from the ceiling and scattered throughout the floors. Everything else looked like a mess; as if the entire frigate had a massive panic as it was being evacuated.

"Screw you." Livewire said, acting as if he was insulted, "Who the hell is even here to even hear us?" he asks.

"I'm not picking up anything on my scanners." Skillsaw spoke calmly, "We should be clear."

"Should be?" Hawk asks. The fear weighing thick in his voice. "What does that suppose to mean, Skillsaw?"

"Look, I'm not detecting any heat signatures, but there are a lot of movement occurring near, what I think, is the control room." Skillsaw tries to defend himself.

"Well, the way I see it, we got about three different ways to get to the control room from here." Hawk began to recompose himself. "Skillsaw, you take that closed off door. Livewire, I suggest you take that open corridor. I'll take the maintenance shafts."

"That sounds like a plan. Livewire?"

"Well s**t. I guess I got no choice." Livewire through his arms in the air in frustration. "You owe me for this, Hawk." he points a punishing finger at him.

The three of them drew out their weapons and headed towards their destinations.

"That b***h-" Livewire grumbled to himself as he headed down the corridor, "That low-life c**k-sucking mother f**ker. Telling me what to do, where to go. S**t, next thing you know, he'll be telling me how to take a piss." He stops in front of a sealed door. "S**t, Hawk. This f**king hallway is sealed off-" he waited for a response through the com-link. "Hawk, do you read me? It's f**king closed…Hawk?...Hawk! D***it, his com-link must be down. Skillsaw, I can't get a connection to Hawk…D***it, communications are down." Livewire places his hand on the door, trying to see how it would open. He turns on the flashlight mounted on his armor to get a better view of the door. He place his black-diamond-tip knuckles on his hands and begins to flex as much as he can; trying to bring out the brute in him. "YOU B***H!" he yells as he lunges to punch the dead center of the door. He leaves an indentation of his fist on the door and looks at it closely to see how the door opens. He places his fingers inside the opening, gathering his strength, he spreads the door with great force and steps through once he made a hole big enough to enter. Patting his hands to rub the dust off, he smiles proudly at his work. "Ya piece of s**t."

Meanwhile, back at the hanger, Hawk spots a vent a few meters high. He piles a couple of boxes in front of the vent to reach it. as soon as he went inside the vent, he began to regret choosing that destination. "D**n, it's dark in here." Hawk complained as he squeezed himself through the air shaft. He turns on the flashlight as well to get a better view at what's in front of him. Once the light went on he got startled at what he saw in front of him. "Oh shhh…Shhh…Sh!" He gasps at the sight of the dead body of a human partially wrapped in bandages with its jaw hanging open and eyes wide open; almost looked like it was looking at Hawk. He immediately saw a flash and his vision began to give daunting yellow shade of everything. The body in front of him changed into a regular female human, but she was crawling towards him and screaming in pain. She reached out for him and right before she touched him, everything flashed back to the way he saw things before. He gasps in shock; both from fear and from the surprise at what he just saw.

"Livewire, Skillsaw, there's some crazy s**t going on around here!" nothing but static was all Hawk got for a response. "Livewire, Skillsaw, can you hear me!? F**k!" Hawk quickly trys to crawl out the other side of the airshaft, timidly crawling over the dead body. "I better not be going insane." He mutters to himself after he gets out of the shaft and sits against the wall.

"Aw crap." He says once he noticed another flash and the same yellow shade in the area. Hawk scanned the area to get a better assumption of where he was and after he looked all around himself, he concluded that he was in a morgue. "This is Hawk, will anyone please respond!" again, nothing but static. _Com-link must be down. _he thinks to himself as he draws out both his battle axe and his sidearm in paranoia and started heading straight for the exit.

During the same time, Skillsaw was curious about how to get the door to open the quietest way possible. He knelt down in front of the door panel with his hacking tool already plugged into it. "Ah crap. This ship is running low on emergency power." he says to himself while second guessing his next move. He unplugs his device and erects his saw to its limit. He revs it up and stabs it through the door. He cuts an outline big enough for him and kicks it inward. "That's one way to stay quiet." he snickers to himself after the loud clinkering sound of the cut-out piece of the door bouncing back and forth off the walls of the hallway. He walks slowly down the hall, thoroughly scanning his surroundings. "Hawk, Livewire, I'm picking up vital signs of a fourth person on this ship." He feels puzzled that no one was answering. "Livewire, Hawk? Ah crap. I guess I'm on my own."

After acknowledging the fact that no one was going to respond, Skillsaw decided to continue his search and holstered his weapon just in case of any encounters. Along the way, he notices a blood smear on the ground and decides to follow in its direction. He blindly walked the halls with blood stains smeared, spattered, and spread throughout the walls without a body in sight. A light flickers behind him and he sees a large shadow on the floor about to strike him so he quickly turns to retaliate only to see that nothing was standing behind him. He turns around again to face the direction that he was heading only to see a large humanoid figure. It had a horned skull with a long snout and blood stained fangs for teeth, it's flesh was so thin, it's bones were easily defined that it's ribs broke through the flesh, it looked like it was an animal standing on its hind legs, it had claws for fingertips, and it held a whip in one hand. Skillsaw was mostly intimidated by its red eyes, gleaming in the darkness of the halls. The demon roared at Skillsaw before catching him around the neck with its whip and yanks him toward him. With its free hand, it grabs Skillsaw by the neck and pins him to a wall. Skillsaw draws out his revolver without the demon knowing and unloads all five shots in it. The demon drops him, leaving him to gasp for breath before kicking him unconscious.

"Emergency systems are online. A.I.V.I. program initiated." Skillsaw heard his AI start even though he was still lying unconscious. "Lethal neural chemicals detected, analyzing for immediate treatment."

"No… this cannot be… d***it!" Hawk said to himself in a timid, shaky voice, sounding as if he was reaching the brink of insanity. He sees another flash before his eyes and began to see a shade of yellow added to his surroundings. "Not this again." He muttered darkly before he drew out his battle-axe and erected the blades.

The corpses on the tables began to twitch and in a rapid motion, they were quickly on their feet and began to move toward Hawk. "This can't be happening. This is illogical. No, this is impossible. It's gotta be just another hallucination" He says doubtfully in a failed attempt to convince himself what he saw wasn't true. He timidly lowers his guard to prove to himself that what he was seeing was only a hallucination. He later regretted that decision when the closest corpse swung an arm to the side of his head, knocking him to the floor. He slowly turned in time to see a corpse pounce on top of him. With his axe, he quickly stops the corpse from gnashing at his face. He hits the corpse on the side of its face with the hilt of the axe, knocking it off of him to give him enough time to get on his feet. He felt a warm sensation spread from his open wound, giving him the idea that he got infected from the hit of the corpse. He touches the open wound with the back of a hand and sees that his blood had glowing green particles in it. "You f***ing tiny little piece of s**t whore, I'll slit your throat!"

The corpse sung another arm at him but Hawk dodged just in time and cut the arm off and grabbed the corpse by the throat with the crook of one of the axe's blade and rips the throat wide open. "Heh, I killed you." Hawk turns around just in time to see the horde of corpses heading towards him. His eyes burned a deep crimson as he gave a battle cry and threw the axe at one of the largest corpses heading his way, getting it stuck on its forehead. Hawk's rage allowed him to run past the front rank of corpses at fast speeds, he jumps towards one of the corpses to gain altitude before jumping of the head of one, landing a foot on the chest of the large corpse, grabs the hilt of the axe, jumps off, and tears the head off with the axe still attached to it. He gracefully lands in the center of the group and he felt as if everything slowed down for him as his rage began to build up. His eyes turned to blood red as he began to slice his opponents to pieces. He seemed to be dancing to a mental tune as he swiftly sidestepped each swipe of his enemies and cut off the limb in return until there was nothing left to hurt him. Once he saw that he was finished, he took in a deep breath to calm his nerves. His eyes returned to their normal emerald color. He looked about the room to see how the floor had been repainted by the blood of the fallen. The morgue was now littered with limbs, bones, and pieces of flesh scattered about the room.

Hawk was suddenly brought out of his calming state at the sound of light footsteps running past him from behind. He quickly turned to see what it was only to catch a glimpse of the passing shadow from a dimly lit hallway. He holstered his blood stained axe, drew out his suppressed sidearm, and slowly began walking into the direction of the shadow. The shadow seemed to look into the direction Hawk was coming from and began to run away as if it was startled by his presence.

"Wait!" Hawk shouted, later regretting it at the thought that he just gave himself away to whatever other forces lurked in the area. He quickened his pace until he was sprinting to reach the one who was creating the shadow. "Where did you go?" He muttered under his breath once he reached the end of the hallway. There was an unopened door at the very end but the figure was nowhere to be found. Assuming that it was nothing, Hawk pulled out his bio-scan. Once he was about to insert it, he heard sobs from behind him.

The sounds of a young child's sobs reached his ears and he quickly whirled into a defensive stance, dropping his card in the process, only to see a little girl with white hair and black tips. She wore torn rags and was barefoot, her skin was a dark, pale color and the rims of her eyes were watery with blood. Hawk noticed blood running down her eyes as she wept and the blood continued to run down her hung arms, leaving a small pool at her feet. "Oh no." he gasped. Once the sound left his mouth, the young girl ran towards him with her arms reaching out to him, threatening to rip him to shreds. He quickly tried to get the door to open with quivering hands. He finally got the card inserted only to figure out that it would take a while for the door to open. On instinct, Hawk quickly whirled around and pulled the trigger, but the bullet only caused her to jolt. He quickly shot again, seeing that one shot wasn't enough to bring her down, just to get the same result. He finally decided to unload the whole magazine on this little girl, screaming throughout the whole time; not out of anger, but out of sorrow.

The girl staggered in her footing as she slowly made her way to Hawk, collapsing once she was only a few feet from him. Before she hit the floor, Hawk quickly caught her in his arms and lowered himself to a knee. "I'm sorry." He whispers to her as he clenched his fists in anger, slowly sets her down on the floor, and closes her lifeless eyes. The door behind him finally opened. He stands up, looking down at the dead body before him, and shakes his head in disappointment as he slowly turned to walk through the opened door. He turns back as the door was closing to look at the girl once more. "Forgive me Zoe." He says before the door shut completely.

"Decontamination in progress." he hears coming from inside the small room he was in. Smoke quickly came down upon him, causing him to cough and gasp for fresh air. He suddenly saw a flash of light, causing his head to start pounding. _I gotta cure myself from their disease. _He pulls out his med-kit from the small, built-in compartment of his armor and frantically searches for an antidote. He pulls out an injector, sets it to the side, and pulls out vials of Type-T-Antidote. He was about to inject himself when he all of a sudden hears a loud bang from the other side of the door. He looks up to see the little girl standing outside the door, "Why are you leaving me!" She shrieked. Hawk brought his pistol up to aim at her and she completely stopped, leaving her little hand on the glass door. Hawk gasped at the sight of the glass beginning to crack around her hand which began to look like it was bleeding, leaving a blood-stained hand print on the door. He placed his gun on the floor, assuming that the girl can't break through the glass, and continued to cure himself. He placed a vile of Type-T-Antivirus into his injector and injected the whole vile into his arm. He started rocking himself back and forth from the excruciating pain and noticed that the little girl was suffering as well. _I need another, _he thought to himself, placing another vial of the antivirus into the injector to inject it into himself. After the third vial, his vision began to static and blur until he completely faded to black.

The pain was gone, the blood stained walls were no longer there, and the piles of corpses were gone as well. Hawk gasped once he got out of unconsciousness like he barely reached the surface of water before completely drowning. He looks around the room to see that he never left his spot from dropping out of the vent. His axe was never drawn, neither his sidearm, only his injector and med kit lay near him along with empty vials of Type-T-Antivirus. "I need to get to the others." He mutters to himself as he gets to his feet and darts down the halls, not knowing where he was heading. _This seems a bit too familiar. _He thinks to himself as he continued to run. He comes to a complete stop, holding his breath in disbelief at what stood before him. It was the same door from his hallucination, a glass door with a bloody handprint, a small handprint with cracked glass surrounding it. Hawk released his held air and took in another deep breath to gather his composure. After acknowledging the fact that it was there, Hawk, walked toward it, head held down in remorse. Assuming that his hallucination was real, he slipped his bio-scan in the slit and the doors slid wide open.

"Neural virus detected. Applying Type-T-Antivirus immediately." The implanted artificial-intelligence's voice was only heard by an unconscious Skillsaw whose fading heart rate was barely enough to keep her running.

"Skillsaw?" Hawk exclaimed in surprise at seeing the cyborg lying on the floor regurgitating a green chemical. _I might need that for research to make a better antidote. _Hawk ponders to himself, assuming that Skillsaw was also infected by the same virus. He kneels down beside him to take a sample of the chemical. He places two fingers on Skillsaw's neck to check for a pulse. He was relieved that he felt a faint pulse indicating that the cyborg was still alive. For the moment.

"Four percent completed." The AI was working hard to bring back Skillsaw.

Hawk, on the other hand, was readying another vial of the antidote into the injector for the cyborg.

"Thirty-four percent completed. Unknown external support received." Hawk injected the antidote into Skillsaw's neck, hoping the process will work faster.

"Thirty-six percent completed." Hawk quickly tried to get another vile into the injector.

"Sixty-two percent completed. Unknown external support received."

"C'mon, Skillsaw, don't die on me now."

"Sixty-six percent completed."

"Here goes another."

"Ninety-eight percent completed. Unknown external support received."

"That should be enough." Hawk checks the vital signs to see if it helped.

"One-hundred percent completed. Threat has been neutralized. Initiating rebooting process…rebooting failed. Charging defibrillator. Stopping heart. 3…2…1…clear!"

The electrical discharge from the defibrillator caused Hawk to slam onto the ceiling and fall back down; landing beside Skillsaw.

"Recharging defibrillator. 3…2…1…clear!" That last shock was all Skillsaw needed to get his systems restarted. He gasped for air once he woke up. "Welcome back."

"Thanks AIVI." Skillsaw muttered out loud and sat down, lying against the nearest wall.

"Ivy?" Hawk stated worriedly, "Skillsaw, I brought you back! Who the h**l is Ivy?"

"She is my Artificial Intelligence and Vitals Indicator." Skillsaw said calmly.

"Oh…wha?"

"She tells me what's up with my body especially my mechanical parts to ensure that everything is functioning properly. If something goes wrong, she quickly tries to find a solution and apply it to keep me safe." Skillsaw feels that his lips were wet from the chemicals he didn't even know he was discharging and wiped the excess off with his arm. "What's wrong with you, man?"

"What do ya mean?"

"I mean you're speaking faster than usual."

"Oh. Must've been from that nifty defibrillator of yours." Hawk's statement caused Skillsaw to burst into laughter.

"Yeah, my bad, man. I don't even know why she says the warning when nobody can hear her unless she connects them through the com-link."

After the laughter died down, Hawk dared to continue the conversation. "Do you know what happened?"

"Yeah," Skillsaw responded aggressively. "AIVI says that it was neural chemical that we've breathed into our lungs. Most likely, it came from the air filters in our disguises."

"Do you think it was some sort of security system built into the armor?"

"No. I think we just saved three lives today." Skillsaw sighed. "Or we were suppo- Wait. Where's Livewire?"

"I dunno."

"AIVI, pinpoint Livewire's location." Skillsaw ordered after jumping to his feet.

"Error: unable to pinpoint location."

"Why?"

"What's she saying?" Hawk asked worriedly.

"Target is moving at incredible speed." AIVI continued to explain to Skillsaw.

"She can't pinpoint his location, he's running." Skillsaw answered Hawk. "AIVI, what area of the ship is he in?"

"Livewire's location is near the medical bay along with another life form."

"Hawk, Livewire's near medical-"

"He's probably infected too." Hawk cut him off before he could finish his explanation.

"Wait. Another person is near him as well."

"S**t! Skillsaw, Livewire's life is in deep s**t. we have to find him!"

"Alright Hawk. AIVI, guide us through."

"Affirmative."

Blood, blood all over the floor, spattered across the walls, dripping from the ceiling, and bleeding from the pieces of every limb scattered throughout the place. Livewire gags, his face beneath the surface of a pool of blood. He gets out of the pool as quickly as he could, chocked at where he was. Choking and coughing out blood as he tries to at least get to his knees since he was lying on the floor. _Where the f**k did this come from and is it contaminated. _He thought as he analyzed the blood around him while he got to his feet. "Oh crap, not again." He says as he comes to the assumption that he is in another nightmare. His eyes dilated in fear when he heard a scream echoing down the halls surrounding the area he was in. It was a dark room because of the dim lights flickering on and off, scans of x-rays and tests scattered throughout the floors along with broken pieces of glass, beakers, syringes, injectors, tables tipped over, and vials with blood spattered, smeared, and dripping all over the area. Livewire draws his revolver and whirls around to face the hall which he thought another scream came from but quickly changing his aim by the second after each oncoming scream of pain. "Avalon, don't miss for me, baby." He whispers as he gently kisses his gun on the barrel.

A blurry silhouette, running at great speed, runs across the room from behind Livewire. Upon reflex, Livewire aims in the general direction, slightly shaking in fear, he sees the same creature from his nightmares. "Who are you?" he demands. "Who the F**K ARE YOU!?" he shouts at the creature standing on all four blades, meters away from Livewire. The creature runs towards Livewire in rapid motion. Livewire, in a matter of seconds, unloads all ten clear shots at it, but none slowed it down.

"That's gotta be Livewire." Hawk shouts at Skillsaw over his shoulder after hearing ten gun shots. The electricity that still coursed through his body kept him energized to stay ahead of Skillsaw.

"I know, Hawk. AIVI, are we still headed in the right direction?"

"Affirmative."

"Good. Hawk, ready your weapon. Livewire won't be shooting for no reason."

"No kidding, but what if he was delusional like we were?"

"Then try to cure him."

"Alright, then you try to restrain him."

"Got it." _I hope._

The two desperately continued to run to try to reach their companion in time. Having running into so many dead ends, they gave up trying to go around it; they just went through.

"Skillsaw, break it down!" Hawk would repeat upon every locked door or other obstacle resulting with Skillsaw using his chainsaw to cut through every obstacle.

"Stand still, will ya!" Livewire yelled as he would continuously shoot and reload.

"NOOOO!" It screamed as it pounced on Livewire, pinning him to the floor. "I…am…fear!" It said. "I…am…pain!" It struck Livewire across the face. "I…am…wrath!" It tried to stab Livewire's throat but Livewire dodged it by a hair. It pins Livewire's arms and brings its covered face closer to his. "I…AM…THE TORMENTOR!"

Hawk and Skillsaw finally made it to the same area Livewire was at, but they didn't see as Livewire saw: they saw a hooded man trying to kill him when he saw his greatest fear taunting him. "Hostile detected." AIVI said.

"Open fire!" Hawk yelled after hearing the AI's voice through his earpiece, but he decided to question it a different time. Bullets were flying towards the hooded man but they ricocheted upon impact. "Crap. Skillsaw, find a weakness to that armor." He ordered once the two got behind cover.

"Already did. There isn't any, try to hit the head. Should be the only way." Skillsaw looked across from Hawk to see that there were windows in the room. "Careful with the windows, we don't want to get sucked out."

The hooded man jumps off of Livewire and runs to cover upon impact of the first few bullets.

"Get back here you b***h." Livewire said in frustration, pulling out his machete while getting to his feet. Little did the other two realize that he was referring to them. Hawk readied an injector of the same antidote and headed for Livewire but came to an abrupt halt upon seeing the hooded man jump out of cover with a dagger in each hand and lands on top of him, trying to stab at his heart.

"Skillsaw, I need the threat neutralized before I can try to cure Livewire." Hawk said as he ran out of Livewire's range.

"Got it, Hawk, just find some cover. AIVI, activate Gungnir."

"Gungnir ammunition activated. Awaiting visual target lock-on."

"Lock on hostile's head!" Skillsaw shouted.

Once AIVI said "Target locked." Skillsaw pulled the trigger, not caring if the target's head was in front of the barrel. The bullet spanned as it left the barrel of the revolver, it's interior balance system allowed it to stay on target no matter if it hit anything else. It ricocheted off a crate Hawk was taking cover behind, heading toward the ceiling, ricocheting towards its target right in the forehead knocking the hooded man off of Livewire, but to everyone's surprise, there was no blood spattering from the head.

"Skillsaw, secure the hostile, I'll cure Livewire."

"Do it fast, Hawk, Livewire looks like he wants to kill us."

Through Livewire's eyes, Hawk and Skillsaw both appeared as the Tormentor as well. "YOU WANT SOME OF THIS? HUH? COME AT ME YOU SONS OF B****ES!" Livewire yelled at the top of his lungs while pointing his machete at them.

"Hawk, I'll distract him. Go! Now!"

Hawk ran out of Livewire's line of sight, planning on flanking him while Skillsaw erected his saw without revving it up. Livewire swings downward at Skillsaw but he brings his saw up to block the initial strike, catching the blade between two teeth of his saw, resulting in a sword lock for a good long moment until Skillsaw broke it, making Livewire lose his grip on the machete to receive a punch to the face.

With the small window of opportunity Skillsaw has presented him, Hawk ran towards a briefly stunned Livewire with a readied syringe in the injector and injected Livewire with the proper dosage to fight the virus.

Livewire pushes him away after feeling the liquid flow through his internal system. He left himself open to be attacked by the assassin as he tried to dampen the pain. The assassin jumped out of a pile of crates it was hiding behind with its two jagged daggers stretched toward Livewire. It plunged its blades into Livewire's warm flesh, hoping that the brute would finally die, but Livewire refused to let this assassin to take his life. With all his might, Livewire tosses the assassin in his final effort to be away from the hooded being. "Where'd you go?" He pondered out loud.

A loud crack caused everyone's attention to turn toward the window near the ceiling. The assassin was trying to break the glass to cause a vacuum to suck everyone out into the darkest voids of space. The glass finally broke, the force of the vacuum caused everyone to lose their footing and slam onto the hard floors of the ship. Skillsaw and Hawk quickly latched themselves onto a railing before they can be sucked out of the ship. The hooded being was too distracted at the group that it didn't notice the heavy crane flying towards it and crushed it against the wall.

"Hawk, the ship's power is too low, it won't shut the emergency doors automatically!" Skillsaw yelled against the sound of the air rushing out of the ship. "You have to do it manually!"

"What about you?" Hawk nearly lost his grip but quickly regained it. "What are you gonna do?"

Livewire quickly punched the floor and got a grip from the large indentation that he'd left but was quickly slipping away.

"I'm gonna help Livewire!" Skillsaw drew his grapple gun and shot it at a wall before attaching it to his utility belt. He let go of the railing to let the vacuum allow him to reach Livewire faster and locked his grapple gun once he reached him. He reached out to grab Livewire's arm but Livewire was quick to reject it. "I'm trying to help you!" Skillsaw began to get angered at the thought that Livewire's stubbornness won't let him to receive help from others.

"You're just going to kill me, Tormentor!" Livewire shot back, losing his grip entirely. He quickly grasped onto a thick wire that wasn't being completely sucked out but his mass only pulled it out of its socket causing Livewire to fly out of the ship. Skillsaw grabs the other end of the wire, pulling with all his might to prevent Livewire from experiencing such a chilling death but Livewire's lower half of his body was already outside of the ship, slowly being frozen by the chilling temperatures of space. The emergency finally began to close, dampening the pressure of the vacuum. Skillsaw used it to pull the rest of Livewire in before getting chopped in half. Once the doors closed completely, Skillsaw and Livewire immediately slammed onto the cold, hard floors, briefly stunning the two.

"You two alright?" Hawk asks worriedly as he ran out of the small control room.

"I think Livewire's still infected." Skillsaw replied. Hawk knew that the dosage that he gave Livewire was enough to cure him so he thought that Livewire's body just needed to process the antivirus more.

Hawk ran toward Livewire with another needle ready in his hand. Livewire heard Hawk coming to him and with a quick flex of his muscles, he broke the ice that formed around his lower half and jumped at Hawk. As he was being tackled to the floor, Hawk injects the sedative into Livewire's neck. Livewire kneeled on top of Hawk because he was beginning to feel tired from the sedative and was only able hit Hawk twice with weak force across the face. To Livewire it may have been weak but to Hawk, it felt like any regular punch.

"That's for twisting my nipples, b***h." Livewire whispered into Hawk's ears before collapsing on top of him.

"Um…Skillsaw, can you give me a hand with him." Hawk was beginning to feel all the air rush out of his body.

"Hawk, you alright, man?" Skillsaw snickers at the sight before him.

"The hell do you think, man? I'm stuck under a f***ing bull!" Hawk was able to exclaim even though he was struggling to breath.

"Quit complain 'n, you'll be fine." Skillsaw grins as he left Hawk to his own devices. "I'll secure the- wait, where's the android?"

"How the hell should I know?" Hawk asked. He lifts his arm to check the injector to see what sedative he put into Livewire. His eyes widen in surprise once he realized what he used. "Um…Skillsaw? Uh…I think we have a problem."

"Yeah, no kidding, I can't find the android anywhere." Skillsaw said as he continued to rummage around the mess to find what he was looking for.

"That's not what I mea-"

"Oww. What happened?" Livewire moaned as he regained consciousness. Hawk only stared with his jaw dropped at Livewire. "What are you looking at?" he asks almost threateningly.

"What are you?" Hawk was getting more intimidated by each passing second.

"What do you mean: What am I?"

"I shot you up with enough to tranquilize a horse for months."

"So?"

"That was a minute ago."

"So?"

"SO!?"

"What else do you want me to say, b***h, I'm no horse." Livewire gets himself off of Hawk and onto his feet, stretching out his tense muscles. Hawk, however, was still lying on the ground, relieved that Livewire was finally off of him. Livewire extends an arm to Hawk. Hawk, surprised by the gesture, smiles and reaches for it. "Psych!" Livewire shouts as he snatches his hand back.

"Ah, you jerk." Hawk complained.

"Just messin' with ya, you little wimp." Livewire grins as he puts Hawk's limp body over his shoulder. "How are things going, Skillsaw?" He shouts.

"I can't find the android." Skillsaw replies.

Livewire draws his revolver and shoots to his side once and holsters it again in one rapid motion. "Got him. He's under that large crate. Was tryna' get out."

"How did you know where it was?" Hawk asked.

"I'm always aware of my surroundings." Livewire stood proudly.

"Cool. Oh and uh, you can put me down now. I'm not dead."

"Okay." Livewire gently tosses Hawk to the floor.

Out of a pile of crates, the hooded android jumped out from behind Livewire. "Get down!" Skillsaw yelled as he went into his state of adrenaline. He pushes Livewire out of the way as he draws out is revolver, and takes aim. He shoots the android four times at the center of its head, hitting its only thermal sensor, penetrating its faceplate, and destroying most of its interior. Things began to move at its original pace as Skillsaw came out of his adrenaline state. The android fell to his feet, twitching with sparks flying out of the holes of its robotic head.

"Nice." Hawk says under his breath as he got to his feet.

"What kind of revolver is that?" Livewire asked as he analyzed the gun in Skillsaw's hand, more impressed at Skillsaw's speed but decided to ignore it for the time being.

Skillsaw was struck with surprise at the question. He thought he was going to be questioned about the android instead. "Um…a .357" Skillsaw replied hesitantly. "Why?"

"It sounds too fast to be double-action, let alone, single-action." Livewire says in confusion.

Skillsaw sighs in understanding then begins to explain. "I can get an adrenaline rush at will and when I do, time seems to slow down enough for me to make my move."

"Wow, I only get stronger when I get an adrenaline rush." Livewire said blankly.

"Must be the radiation." Hawk says sarcastically.

"How do you know 'bout that?" Livewire was immediately on the defensive.

"I think the question we should be asking is: what do we do with this thing?" Skillsaw takes a knee by the assassin.

"It seemed to be after Livewire." Hawk pondered out loud. "Maybe Livewire was its target."

Livewire rubs his chin as he thought over Hawk's statement. "Tweety's got a point. Skillsaw, do you think you could figure out its programming with any of those fancy gizmos of yours. I'd like to be sure that Hawk's right."

"I've never plugged into an android before-" Skillsaw says under his breath as he releases the live-tentacle-like wires from his hacking tool on his left wrist, "Then again, there's a first time for everything." He plugs it into a part of the android's skull that was still intact. The holographic display appeared as soon as all three wires plugged themselves in, but instead of the display being its usual red; it came out blue, resulting in a confused Skillsaw. "AIVI, I thought you said that there was a fourth life form!" he demands.

"Affirmative."

"What then!" Skillsaw scolded furiously at the thought that his AI was misleading him. Livewire, on the other hand, looked rather confused, assuming that Skillsaw was scolding himself. "This android shows no signs of life. How come-"

"Fourth life form is heading toward the hanger." AIVI interrupts, not wanting to be scolded any longer.

Meanwhile, Livewire leans in toward Hawk and asks "Who's this psychopath talking to?"

"AIVI." Hawk replies.

"Ivy? I thought communications was lost. How the hell can this b***h get a hold of someone!?"

"Geez, man chill out." Hawk says in a hushed manner, trying to calm Livewire down. "AIVI is his AI."

"AI?"

"Yeah." Hawk pauses for a moment. "Must be one of those implants he was talking about when we were back at La Habra."

"Could be." Livewire nods. "That's what happens when you let someone f**ks with your head: not only does it get literally screwed, but you also end up looking like a total psychopath."

"Bastard's headed toward the hanger." Skillsaw's sudden outburst startled the other two.

"The Phoenix!" Hawk exclaims furiously.

"Exactly. That bastard's tryna' escape with our ship!" Skillsaw furiously stated.

Livewire took off in a light jog before turning to face them. "Then what are you two waiting for ?" He asks sarcastically as he picks up and sheaths his machete, "Quit your yapping and get moving you two!"

The three of them ran back toward the hanger using the same route Skillsaw and Hawk used to reach Livewire. "How much farther?" Livewire asks. He was surprised to realize that he has travelled far while he was unconscious.

"We're almost there." Hawk replies. Skillsaw remains quiet, only raising a suspicious eyebrow for he knew that Hawk was lying but didn't know why.

"Livewire, do not be alarmed and please remain silent." Livewire heard a female voice coming from the intercom and did as he was told. "I am AIVI; Artificial Intelligence and Vitals Indicator. My user has asked me to deliver a message to you. He says he has something to tell you and that it concerns both the android attack and Hawk." Livewire was puzzled at the AI's message, yet decided to remain silent about it. He only turned his head slightly, suspiciously eyeing the cyborg.

It took a long while until they've reached the opened door to the hanger. "Whew…finally…we're…here." Livewire bent over to try and catch his breath. He was surprised that the running left him exhausted and gasping for air.

"Keep your head up. Let the air go through your-" A silhouette of a man running left Skillsaw with his mouth hung open. "Hawk, over there!" He points towards a maze of crates where he saw the same figure running into; heading toward their gunship. "We'll secure the Phoenix." He yelled as he tried to hoist Livewire's arm over his back to carry him to the ship.

"That's my ship!" Hawk ran in to pursue whoever was trying to escape. Once he reaches a narrow passage of crates, he jumps onto the side of one large crate then to another and another, each time gaining altitude and speed.

"He's inside the Phoenix." Skillsaw tells Hawk through the intercom.

This only infuriated Hawk. _He's going to regret that. _Hawk finally reaches the end of the crates and the peak of them as well and jumps off of the peak and swiftly lands on the Phoenix's ceiling. A moment after Hawk landed, the engines of the ship started, making it hover in place. Hawk quickly opened the ceiling's air-tight hatch and enters. "Get out of my ship!"

Skillsaw and Livewire cringed when they heard Hawk's demand even though it wasn't toward them; they still felt the ferocity in Hawk's words. As the two stood outside the ship, all they heard were grunts, yelps, and other sounds of pain coming from inside the ship. "Ya think Tweety needs some help?" Livewire asks.

"No." Skillsaw replies blankly before hearing a loud punch.

"Oh, heads up." Livewire shouted when he saw the body of a man gets thrown out of the ship. A trail of blood followed the body as it fell to the ground with a loud thud. "Ouch, that's gotta hurt." Livewire flinched at the sound.

"He'll be feeling that in the morning." Skillsaw walked toward the body after being told by AIVI that he's still alive.

"I'll make him feel it now." Livewire smirked as he easily picked up the dying man. The man looks up and was shocked at the first thing he sees. Livewire just grins evilly and delivers a punch across the guys face, sending the body across the floor.

"Don't kill him!" Hawk yells as he exited the Phoenix. "I left him alive for a reason." He jumps from the top of the ship and lands a few meters from the limp body.

"You can relax, Hawk, he's still alive." Skillsaw calmly walks towards the man who's still lying on the floor. He sits the man on a small crate nearby and ties the man's wrists and ankles with rope that he found around the area. "So what should we do with him?"

"I say we end his pathetic life right here, right now." Livewire cups a fist into the palm of his other hand.

"Maybe later-" Hawk rubs his chin as he pondered his next move. "but I left him alive for a reason." He repeated.

"If you wanted info then why didn't ya just say so?" Livewire asks sarcastically and began to shake the man to consciousness. "C'mon buddy-" he gently slaps the unconscious man. "Up n' at em'."

The man slowly wakes with a groan. "What happened?" He whispers as he tried to endure the migraine.

"We'll be asking the questions here." Hawk positions himself in front of the man with his arms crossed. "What happened here?"

"What are you talking about?" The man's question resulted in a heated glare from Hawk.

"I'm talking about the crew. What happened to them?" Hawk's patience began to thin.

"I don't know, why don't you ask that droid that was trying to kill-" The man pauses as he moved his head side to side until he finally laid eyes on Livewire. "-you!"

"It didn't kill anyone." Skillsaw interrupted, "It had been programmed for one specific target and he wasn't even on board at the time."

"How would you know, cyborg." The man spat. The glob of blood barely missed Skillsaw's feet.

Skillsaw punches him across the face. "Don't call me that." He threatens before punching the man again. "I checked the ship's archive. The target's name wasn't enlisted."

"Ya probably missed it, prick."

"I never miss, no matter what." Skillsaw leans in and grabs him by the shirt. "I thoroughly checked every personal file, surveillance footage, and every other archive in the database of this ship. No one even tampered with the data."

A tense moment of silence passed between the two of them. The man glared at Skillsaw for the whole moment until Livewire decided to break the thick ice. "Okay, next question." Livewire removes the man from Skillsaw's grasp and turns the man to face him. "What was the ship's destination?"

"Why, didn't your cyborg tell you?" The man tried his hardest to not appear intimidated by the large brute.

Livewire hit him in the gut, knocking the air out of him. "He told you not to call him that." Livewire waited for a moment before continuing. "Now let's try this again, shall we? What was the ship's destination?"

"Brisingamen Station." The man managed to wheeze a reply.

"Brisingamen?" Hawk pondered out loud to himself. "That d**n station is light-years from here!" He points out.

"I don't know what happened!" The man shouts in fear.

"Then what do you know!?" The team asked in unison.

"NOTHING!" The man was on the verge of hysterics.

The team simultaneously drew their weapons, aimed at the man's, and cocked them.

"You better start talking." Livewire says in a threatening whisper.

"Or else your life ends here." Hawk added.

"So what do you know?" Skillsaw continued.

"The cargo." The man replied, struggling to keep his waste from flowing out of him.

"What about it?" Livewire asks.

"Highly classified cargo was placed on this ship. Inside the cargo hold."

"So what? A lot of ships, military or not, gets some kind of classified cargo on board." Skillsaw says.

"Not like this, they don't." the man says in a more composed tone.

"So what's so special about this "highly classified" cargo of yours?" Hawk asks mockingly.

"It gave off a strong frequency of gamma radiation."

_That explains why things look a little green around here. _Skillsaw thinks to himself. "How did you know about the radiation? Do you have clearance for the Intel of this cargo? Did you have anything to do with this chaos? Did you program the assassin droid? What the fu-"

"Whoa, whoa, cyborg, you're-" The man cut Skillsaw off his questions but received a punch to his face from Hawk.

"He told you not to call him that." Hawk Points the barrel back at the man's head.

"As I was saying-" the man tried to ignore the agonizing pain on his right cheek. "-you're asking too many questions for me to answer right away."

"Well you better start answering 'em if you still want to live." Livewire says after taking a few gulps of rum from a silver flask in his empty hand.

"Alright, alright. I was making my rounds, checking the ship for any radiation leaks, when suddenly I picked up a strong signal coming from one of the boxes, there was no label on it. It only read:

**Classified**

**T313P0RT4T10N DEVICE. **"

"What did you do after you found out it was "leaking" radiation?" Hawk asks.

"I ran to medical. They had me placed in a test chamber to see if I was affected by the radiation. That's when it happened."

"WHAT HAPPENED?"

"Electricity was sparking all over the d**n place and everything just went to s**t."

"And then what?"

"After everything passed, it was dead silent. I was only able to get out of that f**ken chamber because the ship reverted to emergence power. I didn't see anyone left on board."

"What about the assassin?" Livewire asks.

"I don't know anything about it. I...I…I swear to-" He receives another fist to the face from Livewire.

"Vitals indicate that he is telling the truth." AIVI's voice was heard by the whole team from their intercom.

"Or…he's a good liar." Livewire's statement caused the man to give him a puzzled look.

"No, AIVI can detect that. He doesn't know anything about the assassin." Everyone holstered their weapons after Skillsaw pointed it out, except for Livewire.

"Well then, I guess we have no more use for this piece of s**t." Livewire's words struck a note of fear in the man. Livewire squeezes the trigger, the man flinches at the sound, but all everyone hears is a click. "Whoops-" he snickers. "Guess I forgot to reload." He bursts into laughter as he holsters his gun.

The other two just laughed along until Hawk remembered why he needed the man alive. "Wait, one more thing, where's the jammer?" The man remained silent.

"Ya see this." Livewire waves a .500 bullet and places it in one of the ten chambers of his revolver. "You got a ninety percent chance of dying if you don't start talking!" He spins the cylinder and stops it by cocking the hammer. He points the barrel back at the man's head.

"It's in the control room." The man cried.

"Now why would a regular crew member know where the jammer is?" Skillsaw asked out loud.

"It's a defense mechanism; there are a lot of pirates in our part of the galaxy."

"There aren't any pirates out here anymore." Hawk states in an almost questioning manner.

"Jammers come standard in this area." He tried to convince them.

"Either this man is crazy or someone is hiding something." Livewire suggests.

_Oh, someone IS hiding something. _Skillsaw ponders to himself. "We'll find that out later."

"Let's go find that jammer then." Hawk says as he walks away with Livewire following close behind.

The man watches the two leave, relieved at the thought that they were finally going to leave him alone. His eyes widen in fear once he realized they were missing the third. He quickly turns to see that Skillsaw was grinning evilly at him with a fist in the air. The last thing he sees is the black, metallic fist coming at his face at a high speed before fading back to black.

"So where is this…control room?" Livewire asks as he walked beside Hawk.

"How should I know?" Hawk appeared infuriated to Livewire.

"I assumed, since you were the first to leave, that you'd know." Livewire remained composed as he spoke. He placed a hand on Hawk's shoulder, giving it a firm squeeze to try to calm Hawk down.

Hawk turned to face Livewire, looking up to see him eye to eye. "Well I guess I forgot to ask." He abruptly turns and walks away, leaving Livewire behind.

"Your right-" Livewire says once he sensed Skillsaw was right next to him. "-there is somethin' up with Hawk."

"I'll tell you more back at La Habra." Is all Skillsaw says as he continues to walk past Livewire, following Hawk.

"Did everyone s**t the bed this morning? I was the one who was rudely awakened and I still don't act like I got somethin' shoved up my-"

"User is investigating "Hawk" at the moment." Livewire was cut off at the sound of AIVI's calm voice. "Please do not interrupt."

"Wait a sec. How the hell can you be able to contact me through the earpiece when there's a friggin radio jammer in this ship?" Livewire was curious after barely noticing the fact that the AI was able to use the communicator.

"I am capable of doing many things that others would consider impossible." AIVI replied.

"Yeah. Like what?" Livewire asked doubtfully.

"I single handedly restored life to my user." She replied calmly.

_And here I thought Hawk was the medic._

"I found it!" Hawk's shout echoed down the halls.

"Speaking of the devil." Livewire mumbles to himself as he continues to walk down the hall. When Livewire finally reached the rest of the group he sees Hawk with crossed arms, standing in front of a locked panel labeled:

**EMERGENCY**

**JAMMER**

**SHUTDOWN**

"Oh, you've got to be kidding me." Livewire said under his breath.

"Heh, you and me both." Hawk takes a step back from the panel for everyone to see it more clearly. "Well, Skillsaw, knock yourself out."

Skillsaw glares at Hawk out of the corner of his eye, thankful that his goggles didn't allow anyone to see his eyes. He knelt in front of the panel and holds out his hacking tool between him and the panel. He releases the three wires from his tool which quickly plugged themselves into the panel. The hologram appeared right after, projected in its original red color. "And here…we…go." Skillsaw began to hack the panel.

"How long is it gonna take?" Livewire was beginning to grow impatient and somewhat more timid of his surroundings.

"Patience is a virtue, Livewire." Skillsaw was getting infuriated at the difficulty of hacking a simple panel. "You, of all men, should know that." The wires finally removed themselves from the panel, the hologram seemed to get sucked back into the projector, and the wires seemed to slither back into their places. "Done." Skillsaw says as he gets back up.

"Well, you could've shut it down." Livewire says in an annoyed tone as he walks up towards the panel and shuts it down himself. "Dawning Hope, this is the Spec-ops unit on board the ghost ship. Do you copy?"

"I don't hear any static."

"Shut up, Hawk!" Livewire continues to attempt at contacting the Dawning Hope but failed each time. "D***it, no one's responding."

"AIVI, where's the Dawning Hope located?" Skillsaw asked out loud.

"Unknown. Location is out of range." AIVI's voice was heard throughout the intercoms of the whole group.

"How far is your range?" Hawk asks.

"Five-hundred light-years."

"That b***h took off without us!" Livewire shouts.

"Well the train station is not that far from here." Hawk pointed out. "We can still continue over primary mission."

"What about our gear!?" Livewire scolds Hawk.

"Don't worry 'bout it, compadre`." Hawk smirks. "I brought it all with us on our way here." Hawk's statement brought a grin of pleasure on both Skillsaw and Livewire's faces as they walked back to the hanger to leave in the Phoenix.

Inside the Phoenix, Hawk shows them the smuggler's compartments inside the ship which he used to hide each of their equipment. All of them replaced their disguises with their pure black armor and all their default gear they placed on themselves the day before. All of them were pleased at their first accomplished mission, although it was undocumented, and took off to finish their first assignment.

"Let's move out, Fenrir!"


	6. Chapter 5

Miscommunication

** July 12, 2172 12:54**

** Lobby**

** Train Station**

** Fenrir waiting for targeted transportation**

** Project: Fenrir**

"Ya think we missed it?" After the long, tedious flight, Hawk became nervous and concerned about their current objective.

"Cool it, Hawk." Livewire attempted to calm the pilot down.

"Naw, man. We barely have fuel left in the ship as it is." Hawk tried to argue. Skillsaw places a hand on Hawk's shoulder to catch his attention.

"Look, I'm sure we can get fuel elsewhere-" Skillsaw began but was cut off by Hawk.

"But we need to focus on the assignment at hand." Hawk sighs to relax himself and to focus on the mission. "Alright then, does anybody know when the Rhino is supposed to show?"

Skillsaw gives him a perplexed look as if asking, "I thought you knew?"

"Excuse me-" The two turn their heads toward Livewire as he spoke to a woman. She was of average height, standing only a few feet shorter than the brute. She had long luscious black hair and a well toned body, dressed up in business attire. "-do you happen to know when the military train arrives?"

The lady seemed surprise at the respect Livewire gave her. "The Rhino?" She asks.

"Yes ma'am." Livewire acts as composed and friendly as possible while conversing with her.

"It should be arriving in a few minutes." She smiles, hoping that her answer would satisfy Livewire.

"Thank you and have a nice day, ma'am." Livewire gives a slight bow before turning back to face the other two with a huge smile on his face. "We're on time."

"Wow, what a gentleman." Hawk teases.

"Oh, shut up." Livewire grunts while he walks past the two, heading toward the platforms. The other two just followed close behind, forming a tight triangle.

Being in space, the train station had a longer process for the trains to go through because of all the airlocks it had to pass. Even entering and exiting a single train took a long while.

"So how do we get on board?" Skillsaw asks.

"Well, we can either sneak on board or Livewire can charm them into letting us in. That's if you don't want to draw any attention to ourselves." Hawk answered in a whisper.

"Heh, I'll charm them into letting us on board." Livewire grins evilly while he unzipped his leather-jacket-like armor, enough to reveal a little of his revolver.

"What d' you think, Skillsaw?" Hawk asks.

"Why are you asking me?"

"Livewire is in a killing mood and I'm not, let's resolve this democratically, as a team should, and give us your input." Hawk explained.

Skillsaw places a hand under his chin as he pondered his next decision. "Let's do this quietly." He finally replies, "We are supposed to remain undetected, remember?" Livewire rolled his eyes at Skillsaw's reasoning but agreed none the less.

After a few minutes passed, the Rhino finally arrived. The trains of the space nations can be easily categorized in three different types: military, personnel, or resource trains. The Rhino, obviously military, was the first of its kind to be heavily armed with tungsten plated shell and a 100mm machinegun turret at the rear cart.

"Well, Skillsaw, since it was your decision to go quietly. Why don't you lead us in?" Livewire playfully shoves Skillsaw closer to the platform.

Once the train stopped, the doors stretched into a tunnel leading to the air-locked hatches of the Rhino, forming a small hallway large enough for a single file line on both sides; one to enter, the other to exit the train. The group walked along the entering side of the tunnel: Skillsaw at the lead, Hawk in the middle, and Livewire bringing up the rear. At the end of the tunnel stood one of many sentries onboard the train.

"Halt!" demanded the sentry, "this is not a passenger train. Military personnel only."

"We are military personnel." Skillsaw tried to remain calm.

"I've never seen or heard of any 'Fenrir' operatives before." The sentry claimed after leaning in to read the label under the insignia on Skillsaw's armor. "Not even on any list of private military corporations."

Skillsaw crosses his arms, taking a moment to think about his next choice of words. "We're a classified security company, working for a highly classified government, sent here to protect the classified cargo on board this train."

"I was never told about this 'classified' cargo-" the sentry tried to argue but Skillsaw cut him off.

"Your people are supposed to be left in the dark about what's being transported. That's why we're here to keep everything and everyone on board safe."

"I see your point." The sentry fell for Skillsaw's bluff. "Okay then, hurry it up, we're leaving again in about a minute or two and I'm sorry for the inconvenience."

"There's no need to apologize, you're just doing your job." Skillsaw waved a dismissive hand before signaling the other two to follow him inside.

After the air-lock closed behind them, the sentry left them to the first cart of the train. Hawk released a breath he didn't know he was holding once the sentry was out of ear shot. "How'd you do that?" Hawk was amazed that Skillsaw was able to get them in.

"It was nothing." Skillsaw tried to play it off.

"Uh huh, it was nothing." Hawk walks past them, heading toward the rear of the train.

"Where are you going?" Livewire asks.

"We got to protect the 'cargo.' Remember?" Hawk shouts over his shoulder.

The other looked at each other before catching up with Hawk. "So what's the plan?" Livewire asked. "Should we go guns blazin'?"

"No." Says Skillsaw, "We need to get as much Intel from them as possible. Plus, it's too risky to be going 'guns blazing' in a tight place like this. Especially in outer space."

"Why should I listen to you?" Livewire asks in an almost threatening manner. Skillsaw, on the other hand, wasn't fazed by Livewire's remark.

"You said I should take point on this." Skillsaw calmly reminded Livewire.

"Fine." Livewire snorts, "But I'm taking point once we're off this d**n train."

"Skillsaw, how many people are on this train?" Hawk asks.

"Twenty, including us." Skillsaw replies.

"Seventeen? Alright, I say we scope out the place." Livewire began, "I'll take the center. Hawk, you should take the last cart. Skillsaw, you take the first." The other two nodded in agreement.

"Keep your communicators online to let each other know when everyone's ready for the attack." Hawk suggested.

"On my signal, neutralize all targets." Skillsaw finished. "Let's move."

Hawk walks down the hall toward the last of three cars that made up the train with his pistol drawn. As he walked towards the last cart, he would look over his shoulder every few seconds to see if someone was following him and would sigh in relief at knowing that no one was. Finally, he made it to the last cart, which served as the storage room, and took cover behind one of the closest crates after seeing a few sentries patrolling the cart. "Guys, I've spotted five in my area."

"D**n, already?" Livewire responded over the communicator. "Well let's see… I got six. What about you, Skillsaw?"

"I got five on patrol, assuming one is conducting the train." Skillsaw replied. "You guys all set?"

"Yeah." The other two chimed in unison.

"Alright then. Let's do this sh-" Skillsaw's voice was cut off when Hawk switched his communicator off.

Hawk gets out of cover and heads towards a small group of three sentries with their backs turned to him. The center sentry was the first to turn upon hearing Hawk's footsteps. "Who the he-" Hawk points his pistol at the sentry to the right of the center sentry and shoots him in the head. Quickly aims to the sentry to the left and shoots the head as well. "OH F**K!" was al the center sentry said as he took aim at hawk with his assault rifle. Hawk quickly holsters his pistol and knocks the assault rifle off the sentry's hands. The sentry quickly retaliated by swinging his right fist, aiming for Hawk's head. Hawk quickly grabs the arm by the wrist with his right, pulling the sentry off balance, then pushes the sentry's elbow upward with his left, forcing the sentry to turn his back on him, and wraps his left arm around the sentry's throat, bringing the sentry to be his human shield. He draws his side-arm, aims at the catwalk a few feet above where two sentries were located. One stood at each end of the catwalk.

The sentry to the left of the catwalk spotted Hawk and opened fire at him, catching the attention of the sentry on the other side of the catwalk. As his human shield received the enemy fire, Hawk quickly neutralized the sentry by placing three rounds on his chest. Hawk aimed toward the right and the remaining sentry once. The sentry turned by the force of the bullet and fell down the stairs leading to the catwalk. Once he deemed his work to be finished, Hawk kicks his human shield behind the knees, forcing the sentry to kneel before him, and placed a bullet in the back of the sentry's head. Hawk holsters his pistol again, draws out his battle axe, and began to secure the area.

Livewire was anxiously pacing around his area, waiting for Skillsaw to give the signal to begin his part of the hijacking.

"How the he-" the sentry that spotted Livewire got cut off when Livewire grabbed him by the throat.

"Shh, be very, very quiet." Livewire whispered to the sentry who was gagging and gasping for air.

"Guys, I've spotted five in my area." Livewire heard Hawk through the intercom.

"D**n, already?" Livewire responded over his shoulder while still holding on the sentry's throat. "Well, let's see." Livewire looks over the shoulder of the man struggling to breath to spot five other sentries aiming their weapons at him. "I got six. What about you, Skillsaw?"

"I got five on patrol, assuming one is conducting the train." Skillsaw replied. "You guys all set?"

"Yeah." Livewire and Hawk replied in unison. Livewire being more anxious in his tone.

"Alright, then. Le-" Livewire cut Skillsaw off by switching off his intercom with his free hand. Livewire tossed the sentry toward the group of five, crushing the neck in the process and draws out his revolver and machete. Feeling that killing them right then and there was going to be so easy, he decided to run away to lead them on a chase for a greater thrill.

"Open fire!" the leading sentry shouted. Livewire quickly tumble rolled out of the way into cover but didn't stay in cover for long. He continued to run, paying more attention to the sentries on pursuit instead of where he was going, especially when he noticed that the sentries were getting closer.

Before running into a wall, Livewire quickly ran up the wall and continued to run until he reached the ceiling. He placed a few steps on the ceiling before flipping himself upright to land behind the small squad of sentries. Not wanting to use Avalon, Livewire quickly holsters his revolver and uses his machete to trail-blaze through the bodies, leaving a pile of limbs, guts, and all other sorts of peaces lying in front of the door to the last cart.

Skillsaw waited behind the door to the first car. He patiently waited behind cover for the reports of the other two to know that they were ready for the hijacking of the train. "AIVI, scan the interior of this car."

"Scanning complete." AIVI responded after a moment. "There is a sentry ten inches from the door and four others surrounding a device."

"Guys, I've spotted five in my area." Skillsaw heard Hawk's voice through the intercom.

"D**n, already?" Livewire says. "Well, let's see… I got six. What about you, Skillsaw?"

"I got five on patrol, assuming one is conducting the train." Skillsaw replies. " You guys all set?"

"Yeah." Skillsaw hears the two respond in unison.

"Alright then." Skillsaw erects his chainsaw. "Let's do this shindig." The chain began to spin, making the sound of a soft whistle as each tooth cut through the air. Skillsaw was grateful that the dampened sound allowed him to remain unknown to the people on the cart. He finally stood up from cover and positioned himself in front of the door to the first cart.

The sentry stood in front of the door, naïve to what was happening on the other side of it, especially to what was happening on the train. His muscles stiffened all of a sudden and he let out a small wheeze. Everyone on the cart looked to his direction upon hearing the sound of metal cutting metal, disgusted at the sight before them. The sentry slowly looked down to see a beam of hot metal sticking about two feet from his gut. The chainsaw quickly cuts upward, spurting blood everywhere, and leaving the upper half of the sentry split in two. The other four sentries quickly took position in front of the door where their comrade once stood. They saw the blade disappear for a moment then quickly reappearing at a bottom corner of the door, arching an outline until it reached the opposite corner before it disappeared again.

Skillsaw drew his revolver in his left and his shotgun in his right and waited for a moment, which felt like an hour to the sentries before he kicks the cut-out piece of the door. The sentries coughed, chocked and wheezed from the small cloud of sawdust, giving Skillsaw the perfect opportunity to assess the situation. The sentries' throats and lungs began to burn from breathing in the small metal particles in the cloud of sawdust. Skillsaw places the barrel of his shotgun in the mouth of the closest sentry to his right and pulls the trigger, causing blood, fire, and fragments of bone to fly out of the whole in the back of the sentry's head onto the sentry behind him; killing them both with one shot while shooting the other two sentries to his left at the same time with his revolver. Pleased with his work, Skillsaw struts to the conductor's compartment with a smirk tugging on his cheeks.

Hawk carefully searched for his last target without a sound to give away his position. The sentry stayed behind cover, trying his best to remain hidden from his hunter. Desperately trying to relax his breathing, he clutched at his wounded arm, trying to slow down the bleeding to avoid leaving a trail of blood when he pushed himself to cover with his one good leg; the other lays broken from when he fell down the staircase after getting shot.

Hawk began to thoroughly search the area on the moderately large catwalk. He stops in front of a fresh blood stain on the floor. Upon closer inspection, he notices that the stain was smeared in the direction of the staircase. "I must be losing my touch." He ponders out loud to himself as he heads toward the stair case. The sudden gasp of the other sentry on the catwalk stopped Hawk in mid-stride. Hawk slowly walks over to the dying sentry. To Hawk, the sentry looked like a dying animal just waiting to be put out of its misery. He looks down at him as the sentry desperately tried to draw his side arm. The sentry tried to aim at Hawk's head but Hawk quickly kicked the pistol out of the sentry's hand and aimed at the sentry's head with his own. The faceplate of Hawk's helmet slides open to reveal his face to the sentry so they could look at each other eye to eye before the sentry was executed.

The sentry gasped in horror at the sense of familiarity of the trait Hawk's eyes posses; Hawk's iris' color appeared as a dark blood red color. "She…will…find you." He wheezed, coughed, and gagged. Suffering from his punctured, blood-filled lungs, the sentry persisted on delivering his message. "-and she will kill you."

Hawk didn't hesitate to pull the trigger. He just stood over the body, not moving a muscle as he saw the life slowly drain from the eyes of the sentry. Once the enemy's eyes were completely lifeless, Hawk began to move away from that area, completely forgetting about the hunt. "Skillsaw, this better work." He demanded over the intercom.

"It worked." Skillsaw replied almost immediately. Hawk's brows jumped in surprise. "Livewire hasn't called it in yet and he's not responding. I suggest you provide him with any necessary support on your way here."

"On my way." And with that, Hawk left the cart en route to help Livewire.

Hawk nearly regurgitated upon seeing a bloody pile of limp bodies in front of Livewire. "What the hell happened?" he asked once he was able to control the contents in his stomach from coming out.

Livewire simply grinned evilly as he began to explain, "Well you see, one of 'em was about to rat me out so I grabbed him by the neck, accidentally alerting the others. I tossed his body at 'em, snapping his neck in the process and ran away to gain some distance from 'em. They were on pursuit too." Livewire paused to catch his breath before he continued to explain what happened along with some hand gestures to give Hawk a hint of what happened. "I ran up this one wall but the ceiling was in the way, so I booked it, jumped over their heads, and beat the living hell out of each and every one of them from weakest to strongest." Livewire finishes his explanation casually.

"Oh." Was all Hawk could say. There was more he wanted to add to it but decided against it. "Let's go see if Skillsaw needs any help."

"Yeah, alright, let's do that." Livewire smiles with a hint of sarcasm in his tone.

The two walked past the entry doors to where Skillsaw was located to see that the doors to the first cart was cut out with the insides of the cart tainted and littered with blood, guts, and bodies.

"Oh fu-" Hawk couldn't handle the sight, nor the stench of the area to the point where he immediately laid the contents of his stomach spread all over the floor.

Livewire just bursts into laughter upon seeing Hawk's reaction to the scenery. "Keep it together, Hawk." He teases as he pats Hawk on the back.

"Shut up." Hawk spits out whatever vomit was left in his mouth out. "Where the hell is that guy?" Hawk gasps for air.

Without responding, Livewire moves on toward the front, not caring what he stepped on or in. as he would walk, he left a long trail of bloody footprints, spread the guts lying on the floor, and kicked the dead bodies to the side. Hawk carefully moved about the cart, his excuse was so he didn't dirty his armor.

"Hurry it up, man, you take too long." Livewire complained jokingly; trying to make Hawk feel guilty.

"Shut up, man, I don't even know how you can even walk through a place like this!" Hawk reposted as he tried to keep his balance while walking through the place, almost tripping over the insides of a dead sentry.

Livewire patiently stood by the door to the front of the cart, waiting for Hawk to continue the breaching procedure. "You ready?" He whispers once Hawk was on the other side, next to Livewire.

"On three." Hawk whispered back.

"One…"

"Two…"

"THREE!" Livewire quickly kicks open the door allowing Hawk to quickly sweep the area with him following close behind. "D***it, Skillsaw, you could 'a told me you had this place covered too!" Livewire complained as he holstered his revolver.

"You wouldn't respond." Skillsaw smirked. He stood behind the driver's seat, holding the conductor at gunpoint.

"Ya did one helluva job back there." Hawk said.

"Thank you." Skillsaw didn't know whether to take Hawk's statement as a complement or a complaint. The sarcasm in Hawk's voice made him think it was more of a complaint. "We're headed to Munin Communications already. What'd you find in their storage, Hawk?"

"They're shipping scrap metal and spare parts; nothing standard for any other station." Hawk reported.

"I didn't find any blueprints or anything referring to that." Livewire said right after Hawk's report. "So whatever they might be making, it must be done on that station."

Skillsaw nodded once and glared at the conductor. "What's being made on the station?" He asks as he shoved the conductor's head with the barrel of his revolver.

"You'll regret this." The driver muttered under his breath.

"You won't live to regret anything if you rat us out." Skillsaw cocked his gun to intimidate the driver more.

** July 12, 2172 14:54**

"Your project is a failure!" The mysterious woman on the phone scolded. "If it weren't for me, they would have missed their target for sure."

"Did you expose yourself to them?" The man asked calmly as he tried to hide his true emotions of anger.

"The large one asked me for directions. He's more of a gentleman than I thought." She replied.

"What were you doing there in the first place?"

"I was keeping a close eye on them."

"Next time, you should try the surveillance cameras."

"The cameras don't cover everything."

"Then send your lapdog."

"You don't tell me what to do and besides, General Garm is meant for something else."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean if you screw up again, Garm will be the one to clean up your mess."

"What happened with that ship was never suppose to be. Someone else was suppose to 'rescue' them."

"If you want to kill them, then just DO it. Stop playing a game of cat and mouse."

"Well, YOU don't tell me what to do, but in any case, I want to see their true potential."

"Are you…proud…of what you saw?"

"I never expected them to surpass such level of… skill"

"Careful, now. Keep making them stronger and they might end up surpassing YOUR level of skill."

"Never-" The man was suddenly interrupted when a scientist slammed open the door.

"They're at the station." The scientist was gasping for breath. No doubt he was in a big hurry to get to the mysterious man's office.

"Alright, thanks doc." The man replied calmly. The doctor left right after he delivered his message.

"What will they face at the station?" The woman asks worriedly.

"The worst they'll be facing are the heavy sentries. I've equipped them with Nidhugs."

"Is that all?"

"Don't know. I heard the station will be invaded by San Venganza so I don't really know. I'll call you back later."

** July 12, 2172 14:50**

** Rhino**

** Munin Communications Parking Entrance**

** Fenrir en route to training mission **

** Project: Fenrir**

"State your business for coming." The security bot in the entrance booth asked in monotone.

Throughout te whole two hour flight, Skillsaw kept the conductor of the train at gunpoint while Livewire sat against a wall next to Hawk.

"Mother eagle wishes to land on her nest." The conductor of the train replied almost hesitantly.

"Her eggs are safe in the incubator." The bot replied in a deeper tone as it let the train through.

"Am I done now? I have kids." The conductor lied, hoping that the group would buy it since it was his only desperate act to get out of the situation alive.

"Shoulda' thought about that before you got yourself into this mess." Livewire said calmly as he unsheathed his machete and stabbed through the driver from the back of the neck.

Skillsaw felt a pang of anguish as he heard the driver gag and choke on his own blood. "What the hell was that for?" He demanded.

"I'm following suggestions." Livewire's comment through Skillsaw in a state of confusion. After seeing that Skillsaw was confused, he walked out of the train and into the secret storage area.

"No witnesses." Hawk muttered under his breath as he hung his head in remorse.

The only thing that allowed Skillsaw to put his mind at ease is knowing that it wasn't him that killed a seemingly innocent life. "Let's just get this over with." He waited for a minute after Hawk left before he followed him out of the train.

"It's about time you showed up." Livewire scolded Skillsaw in a whisper. "Hawk, you ready?"

"Let's do this then!" Hawk replied cheerfully. Under his helmet, he was smiling with pure joy.

The three of them jumped straight into cover before the sentries surrounding them were able to open fire. The storage room was littered with enough steel crates to provide cover for a small squadron; more than enough for Fenrir. The different levels gave the enemy the advantage of higher ground but that didn't discourage any of the three.

Hawk was the first of the three to return fire to the enemy. Using his assault rifle, Hawk blind-fired over their cover to provide a distraction for the other two.

"Can't shoot me." Livewire teased as he would pop in and out of cover. "Can't shoot me."

Once he hears that they were beginning to reload, he looks out of his cover to take aim. "but I can shoot you." He grins as he looks over his cover and shoots at the armored guard on the second level, piercing through the guard's face plate causing half of the head to blow off.

Skillsaw threw three grenades over his cover, temporarily dampening the shooting from the guards. Taking his window of opportunity, he quickly unloads all five cartridges from the cylinder of his revolver, hitting his targets either in the head or through the heart of the sentries, all before the detonation of the three grenades with ended up killing a small group of sentries. He decided to save the rest of his explosives for another time and would use small bursts of adrenaline to pull of accurate shots without exhausting his whole energy.

In three-shot bursts of fire, Hawk eliminated multiple sentries before running out of ammo in his clip. "WAIT, WAIT, WAIT!" he shouted once he had fired his last shot from his current magazine. Surprisingly, everyone ceased fire immediately.

"What for?" An enemy sentry yelled back.

"I ran out of ammo." Hawk replies while secretly started to reload. "I need to reload."

"Why should we wait?" A different sentry asks.

Hawk smiles and laughs to himself. "It's okay, I'm good now."

Livewire and Skillsaw gave Hawk perplexed looks before continuing the fight with the enemy. After a moment, which felt like an hour, everything became silent. The enemy wasn't firing anymore. Were they all finished?

"Is it finally over?" Livewire asked in surprise, "S**t, that was short." He places his revolver into its holster under his armor, not planning on using it anytime soon.

Unknowing to Fenrir, a sniper on the third level was carefully choosing which head would be the smartest choice to eliminate. The three calmly walk out of cover to head deeper into the station. The sniper finally took his shot, but missed his target by a hair. Livewire quickly jumps back in surprise, startled that a bullet was so close to blowing off his head.

"SNIPERS!" Hawk yells for the other two to get back into cover. "Livewire, kill him!"

"I can't." Livewire yells back after another shot from the sniper missed him.

"Why not?"

"It's something you have to understand." Skillsaw grinned humorously at Livewire's comment.

"What do you mean?" Hawk barely dodged another bullet.

"I don't have the man-power, the resources, nor the give of a f**k to do so." Livewire counted on his fingers his reasons as he said them, resulting in an outburst of laughter from Skillsaw.

"Skillsaw, SHUT UP! Where's the sniper?" Hawk demanded.

Skillsaw sighs after a hard laughter, not taking Hawk's demand seriously. "Third level."

Hawk uses the thermal optics in his scope to quickly scan the third floor for the sniper. Upon finding the sniper, he quickly pulls the trigger; the anti-material round pierced through the barrier between the sniper and him, getting a direct hit through the attacking sniper's head, and unleashing a mist of blood.

"Are we finally done?" Skillsaw asks while the trio came out of cover. The once clean storage room was now led with blood, bodies, bullet-holes, burn marks, pieces of armor, and scattered crates with broken glass and debris throughout the floors. Whatever beams of light that remained gave the room an ominous yellow glow.

"Reload while you still can." Livewire's voice echoed throughout the room.

"I don't like this." Hawk muttered as he loaded his rifle.

"What do you mean?" Skillsaw says as he reloaded his revolver, surprising Hawk whom didn't know someone was listening.

"I mean; how did they know we were coming?" Hawk was on the verge of arguing. "Either we somehow alerted them or-"

"-or someone who knew we were coming, told them." Skillsaw pondered out loud.

"You don't think it was one of our own… do you?" Livewire added. He never really liked the thought of working with someone who would later on stab him in the back.

"I'm not sure but-" the sound of three gates sliding open interrupted Skillsaw in mid-sentence. Behind each gate stood two sentry bots wielding grenade launchers. "-we've got company!"

Livewire and Hawk evaded toward opposite directions, leaving Skillsaw to have the center of attention. One of the six bots shot a grenade, aiming directly for the cyborg's head. Skillsaw quickly snatches the grenade from the air and chucks it back at the pair of droids as it blinked red and beeped faster by the second. The grenade detonated behind the feet of the two sentries; the impact of the explosion pushing them out of their storage containers. The other bots immediately unleashed grenade after grenade at the evading cyborg. Skillsaw quickly barrel-rolled toward the grenade launchers of the fallen sentries and carried a launcher in each hand. Time seemed to have slightly slowed down as the adrenaline rushed through the cyborg's body and with it, he unloaded each and every grenade in the drums of the launchers as he dodged the enemy fire.

"OH S**T!" Livewire was temporarily stunned by the large explosions in the room, covering his ears as he tried to relieve himself of the high pitched ringing in them.

Hawk looked over his cover to see Skillsaw standing almost triumphantly in the middle of the mess. "Do you still have ammo in those things?" he grinned.

"Got one grenade left." He sounded out of breath but only grinned and dropped the empty launcher.

"Good." Livewire interrupted. "We might need it for those heavies." He said as a pointed a finger at two heavily armored soldiers walking towards them.

"HALT! Intruders!" one of them demanded in a deep muffled voice caused by the gas masks they were wearing.

"Oh, so now they tell us to stop." Skillsaw remarks sarcastically.

"They told us to do so before but you were still in the train while it happened." Livewire explained casually. The two heavies turned on the blue flames at the tip of the barrels of the weapons they carried once they stopped. "NIDHUGS!" He yelled as he ran towards one direction while the other two ran in another to avoid getting burned alive.

"Shoot their tanks!" Hawk suggested through the intercom to avoid the heavies from listening in on their plan.

"Skillsaw, toss me the launcher, I got a clear shot at them from hear." Livewire said through the intercom as well. The sentries were too busy trying to flush Skillsaw and Hawk out of cover that they didn't notice the cyborg tossing the launcher to Livewire. The brute caught the launcher and whistles loudly to get the heavies' attention. The two turned in time to see a grenade fly in between them. Livewire detonated the grenade as soon as it was only a few inches away from them, causing their tanks to explode and burn whatever remained of the heavies. Livewire walked closer to where the heavies last stood and observed his work with pride.

"Nice shot." Hawk stared at the flames with amazement. He knew that the large brute could do a lot of damage but didn't expect to see that much.

"It's the only way I know how to kill." Livewire remarked, tossing the launcher to the side.

"What'd you say those weapons were called?" Skillsaw asked once he rejoined the rest of the group.

"Nidhugs; universe's most lethal flamethrower," Livewire gave an amused chuckle before continuing. "But not lethal enough to burn our a**es. Right?" he raises his hand.

"Yeah!" Hawk gave Livewire a high-five followed by Skillsaw who did the same.

"Alright, enough celebrating, we got a job to do." Skillsaw sighed and turned towards a door to the inner station.

"HEY!" Livewire snaps back.

"What?" Skillsaw expected to see more enemies in the same room but to his confusion, there were none.

"I'm taking point. Remember?"

"Fine. Take point then."

"Alright then, I will." Livewire clears his throat before continuing. "Alright, enough celebrating, we got a job to do." Livewire announced. Hawk just gave a mild chuckle but Skillsaw rolled his eyes in annoyance and they continued on with their objective.

"Do you think we should do a body count?" Hawk asks. The anxiety weighing thick in his voice.

"Doesn't sound like a bad idea." Skillsaw supported.

Livewire placed a hand under his chin as he pondered over the idea until he finally gave in. "I killed about twelve here."

"I got eleven!" Hawk exclaims with excitement.

"I got fifteen." Skillsaw adds in. "So that's what? Thirty-eight?"

"Oh, don't forget the seventeen on the train." Livewire reminded him. "So that's like fifty-five."

"Fifty-five." Hawk mutters in surprise. "Wait, should we count the sentry bots?"

"I think we should count anything that tries to kill us." Livewire answered casually.

"Then that makes fifty-six." Skillsaw received confused glares after his statement. "Well you can't forget about the assassin from the ghost ship."

A few minutes passed as Fenrir made their way into the core of the station. Everyone was feeling anxious, especially since they stayed silent and hasn't met up with any other obstacle.

"It's a bit quiet." Livewire broke the silence, purposely startling Hawk a bit.

"Too quiet." Hawk added after cooling his nerves down. "Do you think they used all their fire power on us back there?" They all paused for a moment to think about what he said.

"I doubt it. Not even terrorists are stupid enough to use all their guards all at once." Skillsaw's voice echoed in the large hanger-sized area which looked like it was still under construction.

"Hawk, get to the top of that tower over there." Livewire pointed to an unfinished tower, standing about twenty feet from the floor. "Provide us with some cover from there. If anyone is still on this station, they'd have to come through here if they're after us."

Hawk nodded understandingly, took off sprinting toward the tower, and free climbed it to reach the make-shift platform at the top. "You guys, there's a blowtorch and a couple of gas tanks." He said through the intercom once he reached the platform.

"Leave them there, you might need 'em." Livewire replied in the same way before turning to Skillsaw, pointing at a gate. "Out of all these gates, that one is the only one with a security pad. Can you break into it?"

"Don't doubt my skills, Livewire, I can break into anything." Skillsaw sneered. He walked to the door with Livewire close behind. Once he reached the door, he kneeled down to one knee and had his hacking tool plug into the digital lock.

"How long is it gonna take?" Livewire's patience was wearing thin. Even though he was only waiting for less than a minute.

"Almost there." The cyborg was having a hard time concentrating with Livewire's constant questions. "Got it." He announced a few seconds later.

The door immediately opened right after, the dim lights in the room flickered before remaining on, and the two of them walked in. The room was unusually large and spacious even though there were crates scattered about either covered in dusty blankets or opened to reveal the spare parts or scrap metal within.

To one side of the room; small car battery cells covered with a blanket with a board filled with data and schematics. On the other side of the room laid large gun-shaped objects which looked broken and of no further use. Towards the end of the room, in the center, stood a much larger object upon a pedestal labeled: MJOLNIR.

"It looks like they were trying to build a handheld WMD." Skillsaw said as he looked over the data scattered around the table near the cells.

"It seems as though they've been working for quite some time now." Livewire pondered out loud. He was inspecting the broken weapons. "But, for some reason, they've stopped for a while." Under one of the weapons was a small journal which sparked Livewire's curiosity. He picked it up and began reading aloud. "The MJOLNIR five-thousand is still in prototype form. It can fire a concentrated beam of electricity that can be changed from a fast beam or a much slower stream." He looked over his shoulder to speak to Skillsaw. "Hey, Skillsaw, listen to this: the MJOLNIR is only a one shot weapon, the time span for the beam is only a max of five seconds before needing to reload another battery cell." After not hearing a reply, he went back to reading the journal. "No matter how long the beam is held, after the trigger is released, another battery needs to be reloaded. Hel says that she can help fix that problem with the copy of the schematics I sent her. It works by having the three magnetic cylinders on the drum turn clockwise in the center of the device while having the drum turn counterclockwise. A small electric current from the cell will flow through to cause an electromagnetic field controlled by the frequency of the current. The frequency can be changed by the knob above the one for the cell chamber on the right side of the gun. The cooling system is meant to allow the user to fire the weapon immediately after reloading without causing a meltdown. More on the weapon later. From the desk of Doctor Hernandez."

"Doctor?" Skillsaw perked up from the crate he was rummaging through. "Like a medical doctor? Cause this guy building weapons doesn't sound like any medical doctor." He walks towards the gun on the pedestal and began to analyze it. "You think this is what we were sent to find out about. Shouldn't Weasel have known about this in the first place?"

"Well this was supposed to be a training assignment." Livewire tried to defend. "Maybe this is what they would want us to retrieve." Livewire picked up the weapon to check its weight. "Doesn't weigh much. I think we should take this back and let the scientists back at La Habra check it out instead of just bringing the schematics and whatever else we were told to bring."

"If you say so." Skillsaw nodded and grabbed a couple of cells for Livewire. "Yo, Livewire, I think you should reload it. Just in case." He tosses one of the cells to Livewire.

"Thanks, almost forgot." Livewire quickly loads the weapon after catching the cell. "We should at least keep one cell to bring back to HQ."

"I agree." Skillsaw places one cell in a different pocket while carrying the rest in a duffle bag that he found laying around.

"Guys, you're running out of time." Hawk said to both of them through the intercom. "Some people just showed up and getting ready to ambush you."

Skillsaw's curiosity spiked at his comment. "What do they look like?"

"Nothing like the ones we faced." Hawk replied. "They're wearing metallic masks carved into a skull with a scratch down the right eyehole. The masks look thick enough to repel a nine millimeter round. Their armor's just thick rags but their equipment looks far more deadly too." He continued looking at the area filled with soldiers through the scope of his rifle.

"You ready?" Skillsaw asks Livewire as he loads his revolver.

"Heh, you kidding me? I'm always ready." Livewire aims the gun at the gate and squeezes the trigger, causing the cylinders to turn creating a waving sound as it began to glow with sparks of electricity flashing around the cylinder before the light and sound around it warped and a beam of electricity blasted out of the barrel and through the gate.

Hawk saw the beam break through the gate and through a barricade of sentries that stood in front of it. The beam shifted side to side, burning and electrifying anything and anyone that stood in its path.

"D**n this' one BIG F**KING GUN!" Livewire shouted with laughter once the beam died down. More soldiers appeared after a moment to replace their fallen comrades. "RELOAD!"

Skillsaw tossed Livewire another cell and quickly ran out the whole blown into the gate, heading straight for the nearest pillar for cover from another blast of Livewire's super weapon. Livewire walked calmly out of the room while the beam continued to blast through the enemy sentries. Once the beam died down, Livewire quickly ran to a different pillar to take cover. "RELOAD!" he shouted over the sound of the bullet-storm. He turned the knob on the side of the gun to see the chamber pop out on the top side of the gun and pulled out the dead cell, singeing his fingertips a bit.

"Livewire!" The cyborg yelled to get his attention and tossed a new cell at him. Livewire quickly caught it and placed it into the chamber and tried to close it gently but it jammed.

"D***it, b***h! Now aint the time to be jamming on me!" Livewire slammed the chamber shut and hoped it still work. "Skillsaw, give me some cover while prep her up to fire."

"I'm a little busy here." Skillsaw was popping in and out of his cover to shoot at a different soldier, killing each one in just one shot.

"D***it." Livewire muttered. "Hawk, you could help us out now." He yelled through the intercom.

"I'm trying to find the leader."

"It shouldn't be that hard!" Livewire tried to rebut.

"THEY ALL LOOK ALIKE!"

"Well then, f**k the leader and start busting caps up there a**es!"

"Got it."

After hearing a sniper being fired from Hawk's area, Livewire stood out in the open with Mjolnir ready to fire. "Suck on this!"

Meanwhile, Hawk was sniping from his tower. Each shot served to kill more than just one enemy target with his precision. All while he remained in cover and undetected.

"Ah, I think this chap's spotted me." He muttered in cover after seeing the eyes of his next target locked on him.

"SNIPER SPOTTED!" Hollered a soldier from the ground.

"Yup, this b***h spotted me." Hawk ducks back into cover to avoid the enemy fire. He felt more relieved when Livewire finally decided to unleash the stream of electricity from his super-weapon and drew the attention back to him.

While the sentries were distracted, Hawk tossed one of many fuel canisters from the tower toward a group of soldiers. Skillsaw was about to shoot his target when he spotted the tank falling from the tower. Time seemed to slow down for the cyborg as he aimed at the fuel tank instead and shot it at the perfect moment.

"Thanks for the support, Hawk." He said through the intercom.

"'Thanks for the support.' A**hole! That was for me to shoot." Hawk switched from his sniper to his assault rifle, put it to full-auto, and let his anger out on the enemies below while screaming in rage.

Back down below where Livewire and Skillsaw were holding the position. The situation grew more difficult to handle by the second.

"Skillsaw, we need to split. Anymore of this and we're screwed!" Livewire hollered across the room.

"Got it!" Skillsaw called back and reached into the duffel bag he was carrying with him. "Take these." He tossed three more cells at Livewire. "You gonna need it." Before Livewire could reply, he ran down an opened gate behind him next to the one the two of them came out of before.

"The cyborg is headed toward maintenance. Bravo team…Destroy him." A voice boomed over the speakers in the area.

"Yo, Livewire, that's got to be their leader." Hawk said through the intercom.

"Well, no duh, Tweetie. Find him and kill him."

"That's what I've been tryin' to do but you was all like 'no help us out' and sh-"

"Screw it then. Just kill whoever is left. Skillsaw and I can handle whoever follows us."

Hawk barely avoids getting shot before glaring at Livewire's direction. "'We can take care of ourselves' my a**."

"Just find their leader."

"That won't be necessary." Skillsaw tells them through the intercom.

"Say what?" the other two chimed together.

"I found him…and I'm gonna need some assistance."

"Ha, told you he was gonna need some of my help." Hawk said jokingly to Livewire.

"No you didn't." Livewire replied calmly. "Alright get their attention again with another tank. I'm heading out." With that, Livewire runs through a different gate than what Skillsaw went through.

Hawk felt that he didn't have much time and quickly through another tank at a random location and shot it with his side arm in one shot while it was still in mid-air. "I still got the skills, b***h!" he celebrated until his memory of Skillsaw's plea for help came back to him. "Oh crap, I still gotta help that one guy." He frantically looks through the thermal optics of his scope on his rifle to find Skillsaw but couldn't find the guy. "Hey, Skillsaw, where you at?"

"I'm in the radio tower of the maintenance room." Skillsaw whispered.

_Maintenance is this way. _Hawk thought to himself and quickly turned to look at a different direction. He still couldn't find the cyborg so he put the heat sensitivity of his scope to high and continued to look again. The sniper could only find two fain heat signatures. "Which one are you?"

"The less hotter one. My limbs don't give off any heat."

To Hawk, neither heat signature looked any hotter than the other. _S**t! _Hawk thinks to himself. "That must be at least five walls of steel." He mutters to himself. "Give me a minute." He tells Skillsaw.

"I don't have a minute."

Hawk desperately pulls the bolt on his rifle to release the bullet, catches the bullet, and starts up the blowtorch to heat up the bullet; enough to avoid not firing it while he held it delicately in his fingers.

"HAWK!"

"One second!" Hawk quickly loads the hot bullet in the empty chamber of his sniper. He aims quickly at one of the heat signatures and pulls the trigger.

The hammer hit the rear of the shell, causing the gunpowder to combust, making the bullet even hotter as it span out of the barrel of the rifle. The bullet left a stream of smoke as it burned straight through the air. It burned straight through its first wall like a hot knife on butter, its momentum only slowing down by a dime, and leaving a perfect circle on the wall of steel. After its seventh wall, the crusty-looking bullet finally hit its intended target; leaving a spray of blood in its mist as it pierced through the target's head.

Hawk hoped and prayed that he didn't kill his companion.

Skillsaw quickly ran down the halls, not knowing where he was heading. He would look back over his shoulder every few seconds to see if sentries were following and to his relief, he was still out of his enemies' field of view. After about a few minutes of running, he to spotted the sentries getting closer and closer on his tail. While dual wielding his shotgun and revolver, he would completely turn to face the opposite direction while running backwards in his initial direction. He shot the surrounding tubes and pipes to cause fire and steam to hinder his enemies. After another while of running, he finally arrived at a much smaller room. On the opposite side where Skillsaw stood, was a window surrounded by explosives.

"One stray bullet and everything in this whole station can be sucked inside-out." The cyborg muttered under his breath. He continued walking until a spotlight shined brightly on him. The light blinded him only for a second thanks to his goggles with blocked most of the bright light.

"Carter!" A voice boomed over the speakers in the room. The familiarity of the name caused Skillsaw to jump into a defensive stance. "It's been a long time!" The cyborg spotted the man who shined the light on him in the radio tower. "How are those limbs working for ya?"

"I'm afraid you have the wrong cyborg." Skillsaw hollered right back as he headed toward the tower.

"Oh, I almost forgot I had your memory wiped before those neural implants were installed." He mocked back, making Skillsaw grit his teeth in anger.

Skillsaw saw the man speak again but didn't hear his voice. "Yo, Livewire, that's got to be their leader." He heard through the intercom.

"Well, no duh, Tweetie. Find him and kill him."

"That's what I've been tryin' to do but you was all like 'no help us out' and sh-"

"Screw it then. Just kill whoever is left. Skillsaw and I can handle whoever follows us."

"'We can take care of ourselves' my a**."

"Just find their leader."

"That won't be necessary." Skillsaw tells them through the intercom. Instantly silencing the two. He entered the radio tower to see that the man pointing a gun at him.

"Say what?" the other two chimed together.

"I found him…and I'm gonna need some assistance."

"You can forget about their assistance, old friend." The man threatened.

"Look, man, I don't even know who you are." Skillsaw said and draws out his revolver.

"Forgive me." The man said sarcastically. "Where are my manners? I am the one who agreed into creating you. I am the one who removed your past from you. I am the one who changed who you are. My name is Richard." His hands began to shake from rage. "I am the first Lieutenant of San Venganza. I was sent here to deliver a message to you, Joseph." He waved an old early twenty-first century disk.

"My name is not Joseph Carter." Skillsaw muttered loud enough for Richard to hear him.

"Hey, Skillsaw, where you at?"

"I'm in the radio tower of the maintenance room." Skillsaw whispered to Hawk.

"Do you even remember your own name?" Richard yelled.

"Why are you here?" the cyborg tried to change the subject.

"San Venganza and the Resistance formed an alliance to end all you government scum." Richard was close to pulling the trigger. "My assignment was to deliver a message, and that's what I'm going to do." He sets the disk on the desk next to him and pulls out a detonator. "If you can come back from the dead once, you can do it again."

"Are you really willing to die for something like this?" Skillsaw aims at Richard, placing them both in a deadlock.

"Which one are you?" Hawk asks.

Skillsaw assumed he was using a thermal scope to find him. "The less hotter one. My limbs don't give off any heat."

"Save your breath, Joseph, you're gonna need it." Richard gave a devilish grin.

"Give me a minute." Hawk tells Skillsaw.

"I don't have a minute." Skillsaw replies.

"I hope you're as fast as you were before I killed you the first time." Richard presses the button on the detonator but the explosives didn't go off.

_A dead man switch!_ "HAWK!" Skillsaw yells.

"One second."

Richard places his gun next to the disk, knowing that he wouldn't be needing it any more. He turns to Skillsaw and removes his mask to reveal his scarred face. "REMEMBER ME, SKILLSAW!"

The two heard multiple piercings of metal. Richard quickly turns to face the direction of the sound in time to see a crusty bullet hit him directly in the forehead. Despite the shape the bullet was in, it exited straight out of the other side of Richard's head, leaving a spray of blood. As Richard's dead body fell to the ground, his hand released the dead man switch, and the explosives detonated, causing a vacuum.

The pressure from the vacuum caused the windows in the radio tower to break and caused Skillsaw to lose his balance. He barely had time grab hold on the window frame before he got sucked out instead. The cyborg quickly pulled out Gleipnir and shot at the opposite wall. As soon as he knew that it was secure, he latched his grapple gun to his utility belt and allowed it to pull himself in.

_There's gotta be a way to close it! _Skillsaw frantically searched the control panels of the tower for anything that could help. His eyes finally laid upon a lever that read: Emergency Pressurized Doors. "If that idiot wanted me to get sucked out, he should've remembered about that lever."

"Skillsaw! It's good to hear you're alive." Hawk sighed with relief.

"Thanks for the save." Skillsaw looked through the holes of which the bullet came from. "Wow! Seven walls of hard steel-"

"And I still pulled a headshot! WOOOH!" Hawk celebrated.

"That still only counts as one." Skillsaw assumed Hawk was going to use that kill to get a higher body-count. He looked around the tower to see that the dead body was still there along with the disk and the gun. _Can we even get whatever data is still in this thing?_ He thought to himself as he looked at the disk. He placed it one of his many pockets and picked up the gun next. _A five shot four-fifty-four revolver._ He grinned gleefully at the sight of the highly decorated weapon.

He looked down at the dead carcass and began to ponder his next move. _I would like to know more about you and this 'San Venganza.' _He lowered himself and pulled off the dog-tags from the dead body and began to head out. "Hawk, where's Livewire?"

"He took off a little while after you did." Skillsaw heard a short, loud ringing from Hawk's side of the intercom. "D***it, piece of s**t! This b***h almost got me."

"You alright?" Skillsaw was worried that Hawk was seriously injured.

"Yeah, I only got 'bout two more b***hes to handle and I'll meet you guys back from which we came from." Hawk assured Skillsaw.

"Fenrir, regroup at the storage room." Livewire said through the intercom with a lot of gunshots and shouts of pain in the background. "We're riding the Rhino back to the Phoenix!"

A few minutes have already passed. Skillsaw and Hawk met up at the storage room at the same moment.

Hawk sounded as if he was running out of breath. "Where's…Livewire?"

"Don't know." Unlike Hawk, Skillsaw sounded normal. "I thought he'd be here waiting for -"

"TAKE COVER!" Livewire's voice echoed from a nearby hallway, along with a lot of gunfire in the background. Livewire finally appeared from the hallway, running from a group of pursuing enemies. Skillsaw and Hawk didn't hesitate to move to cover. Livewire jumped over the large crate Hawk and Skillsaw ran to and took cover along with them. "Skillsaw, I need another cell." He maniacally laughed in sarcasm.

"This is the last one, not counting the one we need to bring back." Skillsaw hands him the cell. He was more concerned over his life than the objective.

Livewire quickly reloaded Mjolnir before completely getting out of cover. "Suck on this, you pricks!" he shouted as he discharged the energy from the gun; smiling gleefully as he saw each soldier either convulsing or burning as the beam struck them.

Hawk and Skillsaw used that moment as an opportunity to run back to the Rhino. "Livewire, let's go." Hawk shouted before running to the driver's compartment.

Livewire tossed two spike bombs at the center of the storage room before turning to leave. At the doors of the Rhino, he looked back while holding the detonator in front of him. He detonated the bombs and immediately closed the thick doors of the train to avoid getting himself impaled. "Hey, Skillsaw, come take a look at this." He ushered for the cyborg to see what happened.

Skillsaw's eyebrows jumped in surprise at the sight of Livewire's mess: if the explosion didn't kill the sentries, the spikes would have surely shredded them to bits.

"Here." Livewire handed Skillsaw a seemingly large detonator with a smile on his face. Then his expression grew stern. "Don't press it until we're clear from this place."

The train jerked as the thruster started all of a sudden. "I'm putting this thing on auto pilot." Hawk's voice boomed from the loud speakers. "Next stop: the train station."

It took a while before Hawk returned to the rest of the group from the driver's compartment. "What do we do next?"

"Let's go to the very back." Livewire suggested. " I have something to show you two." Livewire led the two to the very rear of the train and began to focus on the station. The other two followed his example and did the same.

Hawk was a bit hesitant about the whole thing about being in the last cart of the train. Once he entered, he finally remembered that he forgot about the wounded sentry he was hunting down.

"Do it now." Livewire said to Skillsaw with shear anticipation. His voice brought Hawk back to reality.

Skillsaw pressed the detonator and was impressed at the light show before him. The Munin Station was completely obliterated with debris flying in all direction. "How did you make that happen?" He asked once the moment came and went.

"Well…" Livewire rubbed his chin as he thought about where to begin his story. "After we split, I dragged some of the attention with me. I ran down this one hallway. It was dark and had very tight spacing. There was a large opening which led to another area where this one guy, I think he was a scientist, spotted me. I grabbed him by the throat before he could sound an alarm and tossed him to the sentries hot on my tail. The distraction served well, I lifted an opening on the floor and jumped right in, losing the sentries for a good moment. In there, I found a briefcase with our symbol on it. I thought it was one of those supplies weasel set out for us and I found a s**t-load of explosives in it. I got back out and I booked it to the direction where the scientist came from and I found the power room. I planted the explosives onto each fusion reactor and blasted my way out after tellin' you guys where to meet up and brought the party to us."

"Wow…that's…impressive." Skillsaw states after Livewire's explanation. Livewire only smiled in satisfaction as he looked passed the window at his work of art.

After a moment, a gun fired. Hawk and Livewire quickly turn to the direction of the sound of gunfire. Skillsaw clutched a hand on the open wound and went to cover as quickly as possible while Hawk and Livewire provided a distraction.

"Medic!" He shouted as he saw that he couldn't do anything about the wound.

Hawk hesitated before hurrying to Skillsaw's aid. He debated over honor or friendship but no one else would ever know. As soon as he arrived at Skillsaw's location, he saw liquid mercury seeping between the cyborg's fingertips. "Is that…blood?"

"Just help me out!" He demanded.

"Let me see." Hawk ordered Skillsaw as he forcefully removed the cyborg's clutched hand. Hawk analyzed the wound through the armor as best as he could. "Skillsaw, the bullet is still inside. I need to remove the armor to take it out." Hawk didn't wait for any consent, he quickly unbuckled the body armor and reached into his built-in pack for his medical kit. He quickly scooped out the fifty-caliber round with his blade. "Don't worry, it's clean." He assured Skillsaw when he saw the worried look on the cyborg's face. He stopped the bleeding by adding healing foam in the wound and bandaged it. Hawk quickly places the armor back on, giving him the all clear.

Meanwhile, Livewire ran toward the attacking sentry after seeing that Hawk ran to help Skillsaw. "Come out here, coward." Livewire holsters his weapon as he neared the sentry's cover. He rounded the corner to see a frightened, crippled sentry on the floor, trying to crawl away.

After the moment of fear that struck the sentry at the sight of the hulking brute, he was only able to place three rounds into Livewire who only rubbed them off as if they were nothing.

Livewire quickly grabs the downed sentry, breaking his only good arm and causing him to squabble in pain before he ended his suffering with the last round in the sentry's gun. He walked out of the cart, leaving the carcass to rot, and leaving the other two to their own devices.

Skillsaw stood up before hawk after he secured his armor. He kept his stare on Hawk to question him in the case that Hawk claimed that the cart was clear but decided against it. He walked past Hawk and headed the same direction as Livewire leaving Hawk to gaze out the window; all alone.

He was beginning to daydream about the happenings and imagined how it could've gone better. He was immediately brought out of his daydream when he spotted pieces that he assumed was debris from the station; suddenly move quickly towards their direction. "HUNTER-SEEKERS!" Hawk quickly ran toward the front to warn the others.

"Do you think that it really-"

"Hunter-seekers are right behind us!" Hawk interrupted Skillsaw in mid-sentence and sounded as if he was out of breath.

"What?" Skillsaw looks up from analyzing the Mjolnir on the floor with Livewire leaning against a nearby wall.

"Hawk, derail this motherf**ker! Skillsaw, make any necessary repairs if the interior of this train gets damaged! I'll deal with these b***hes!" Livewire ordered as he made his way toward the rear of the train. At the third cart, he sees that there is a ladder in the center of the catwalk leading to the heavy turret outside, on top of the train. He put on a space suit and vacuumed out the oxygen before making his way up the ladder. He latched his life-line onto the railing before opening the hatch to the turret.

The hunter-seekers arrived in a matter of seconds. They first arrived as cone-shaped drones before splitting open to reveal their dual-Gatling guns. Livewire was the first to open fire on the unmanned vehicles. The tri-barreled turret had an extremely slow rate of fire but each shot, plus Livewire's accuracy made up for it. The first wave of drones didn't have a chance against him, neither one of them even fired a single shot at the Rhino. The last two waves hit Livewire the hardest, leaving Skillsaw to quickly rearrange and repair any of the shields from the inside of the train. The second wave rushed Livewire and quickly flew past him while the third and final wave attacked. He quickly finished off the hunters on the rear before turning to face the ones attacking from the front of the Rhino.

The rotation of the turret was so slow; it infuriated Livewire to the point where he stood up on the roof of the Rhino. His boots magnetically attached themselves on the metal. He held his grip on the turret and began to gather his strength. He tore the bolted turret off its place and fired at the hunter-seekers in the front.

After Livewire was done, he pulled himself back into the train while he carried the turret in one hand and held the ladder in the other. He walked into the first cart after changing out of the space suit and into his regular armor while still carrying the turret with him. The other two stared at him in shock once they noticed the heavy turret he carried gracefully in his hand. After a while of seeing them staring at him, Livewire began to grow uncomfortable. "What?" He demanded.

** July 12, 2172 16:27**

** Rhino**

** Train station platforms**

** Fenrir en route to HQ: La Habra**

** Project: Fenrir**

After the train entered the station, everyone around the platforms froze in shock at the sight of the Rhino.

"What happened?" "Are they alright?" "Do they need help?" "Should we do something?" The bystanders all gasped at the sight of the exterior of the train. It was tainted with multiple bullet holes across its hide. Plumes of smoke rose from the damage along with electricity sparking here and there.

The doors slid open to reveal three figures standing tall and proud as if expecting praise from the citizens in the area.

"Do you remember where you parked it?" Livewire asks Hawk as he led the team toward the hanger; constantly trying to ignore the stares of others.

The civilians timidly backed away from Fenrir as they eyed the artillery the trio was carrying. They were all amazed mostly at Livewire who was carrying Mjolnir in one hand and the torn-off, heavy turret in the other.

"Of course I remember. How could I forget?" Hawk's enthusiasm seemed to cheer up the others as they headed for the Phoenix to go back home.

Upon arriving at the coordinates where they last saw the Dawning Hope, they saw that the only thing left was the ghost ship they left behind.

"Aw s**t." Hawk complained.

"What?" the other two ask in unison.

"That b***h ditched us."

"Who?" Livewire asks although Skillsaw was beginning to get a good idea of what Hawk was talking about.

"You think we could jumpstart that ghost ship?" Skillsaw asks.

"Maybe, but we'll have to reroute the power to the engines to get her moving again." Hawk suggests.

"Why not just take the-" Livewire pauses to think. "Oh yeah, the Phoenix doesn't have enough fuel." Livewire would've slapped himself if he was in a better mood. "Fine." He sighed, irritated at the fact that he had to set foot back inside the ghost ship.

Once they were about a kilometer away from the frigate, hawk spotted a few red dots on his radar. "We're under attack!" Hawk exclaimed.

Livewire immediately jumped to the pilot's side. "Where? Who?"

"We got gunners on our tail!" Hawk pointed a finger at the radar.

A jolt from the receiving gunfire knocked Skillsaw and Livewire off balance for a bit. "Does this thing have any rear defenses?" Skillsaw asks.

"No!" Hawk cried more out of disappointment than in anger. "Brace yourselves!" Another jolt caused Livewire and Skillsaw to fall onto their backs. "I got an idea." Hawk snapped and quickly turned off the engines on the Phoenix and let the momentum carry them for a while.

"What the hell are ya doin', Hawk?"

"Trust me, Livewire!" Hawk angles the engines to be pointing below the ship and quickly turns on the engines and immediately turns them off causing the ship to flip. The ship moved to fast for the artificial gravity to keep Skillsaw and Livewire on the bottom of the ship and caused them to hit the roof and back down to the bottom of the ship. Hawk quickly angles the engines to face the front of the ship and once the ship was facing the complete opposite direction, he thrusts the engines back on to continue their direction but facing the total opposite.

Skillsaw looks up from where he was laying to see the windshield of the Phoenix to see the oncoming enemy gunships. "Oh-"

"S**T!" Livewire exclaims right after seeing the same.

Hawk kept the same stern look with a devilish smile spreading across his lips. No one noticed the joyful look in his green eyes as he opened fire on the hunter-seekers. Skillsaw and Livewire seemed worried while Hawk was enjoying himself throughout the whole dogfight.

"Hawk!" Skillsaw managed to choke while still trying to hold back a hurl. "We're nearing the ship. Turn her around!"

Hawk hesitated for a bit before finally turning the Phoenix to crash land inside the hanger of the ghost ship. The hanger doors surprisingly closed once the Phoenix was completely inside. Once it came to a complete halt, Hawk was the first to quickly exit the ship.

"Whew, not a single scratch." He sighs in relief.

"Let's hurry and get back to La Habra." The anxiety weighed thick in Livewire's voice.

"Wait." Skillsaw raised a hand that halted the other two before pointing a finger at a serrated body lying on a small pool of blood. "Isn't that the guy we left behind?"

"Yeah." Hawk sighed once he got to the scene. "Looks like he's been sliced by a blade of some kind." He said after further analysis of the corpse.

"More like an antique katana to be exact." Skillsaw muttered while crossing his arms as he analyzed the body. "Who'd carry a weapon like that nowadays?"

"I think I know." Livewire muttered darkly as he pointed at a symbol on a nearby wall written in blood.

_The resistance. _Hawk thought to himself as soon as he recognized the symbol. "We got pirates." He announced. "Keep an eye out."

Everyone drew their weapons and began to scan the area for any foes.

It took a while before they got the engines started. To their relief, they didn't encounter any opposing force on the frigate.

"Maybe they got what they came for." Hawk suggested while Skillsaw was working on rerouting the power to the engines.

"But there was nothing to take." He denied Hawk's suggestion.

"You don't know that for sure." Livewire rebutted.

After the engines were fully operational, the three of them remained on the bridge while Hawk piloted the ship slowly to La Habra Station.

Once they were a few kilometers away, they received a contact from the station's security. "This is Scott of the La Habra. Identify yourselves."

"This is Fenrir operative: Hawk, working under your captain's orders." Hawk replied.

"Give me a headcount of your crew, pilot."

"Three."

"Alright, hold still as we scan your frigate." A while past before Scott spoke again. "You're all clear to land. The captain will meet you in the hanger."

"Thanks." Hawk turns off the communicator. "Idiot."

** July 12, 2172 19:29**

** Briefing Room**

** La Habra **

** Fenrir being debriefed by C.O. Jackson**

** Project: Fenrir [SUCCESS] **

Livewire sat patiently in the same room he woke up in a few days ago. It took longer than he expected but after few minutes, the C.O. finally showed up. He sat across the table from where Livewire sat with a portfolio in his hands.

"Okay, Livewire." The C.O. began to read through the portfolio with Livewire's report on the mission. "I'll be asking you a series of questions. All answers, comments, and remarks will be strictly confidential."

"So what you're saying is that whatever happens in this room…stays in this room?" Livewire was bored and tried to entertain himself as much as he could throughout the interrogation. The C.O. nodded in response. "Cool. Please, do continue."

"So how was your first assignment?" The C.O. began to flip through the pages.

"Well…I'm still alive and the mission was a success so I'm feeling pretty d**n good." The sarcasm in his voice was obvious but the C.O. chose to ignore it.

"It says in your record that it's been a long time since your last assignment; since you last killed someone. How did you feel when you took someone's life today?"

Livewire looked as if he was insulted by the question. "I felt hungry for more." He said half-jokingly. After each answer that he would give, Jackson would write something down on a notepad.

"So what do you think about your new partners?"

Livewire's eyes widened in surprise. "What the ****! I KNEW THIS **** WOULD BE A ******* PERMANENT ******* THING BUT SONUVA*****, MAN! WHY THE **** WOULD SOME ***** ******* DO SOME **** LIKE THIS!? ****, ****, *****************!" Livewire sighed to cool his aggression after the loud outburst. The C.O. wrote some more on his notepad. "I knew this s**t would be permanent." He complained under his breath. The C.O. lifted a suspicious brow at that. "Where do I start?"

The C.O. remained calm as if Livewire's outburst is normal. "Let's start with Skillsaw."

"Ah, that dumba**. Well, his friggin gizmos and gadgets are pretty cool but they'd look better on me." Livewire joked then his expression grew more serious. "Nah, he's alright."

"What about Hawk?"

Livewire sat frozen for a while then leaned in to whisper to the C.O. "Alright, promise not to tell him?" Jackson nodded. Livewire sat back in his chair more relieved. "That mother-f**ker is friggin bada**! He's a good pilot; I mean he's so good, he makes good pilots look…not so good. He pilots that b***h like there's no mañana and he's one helluva marksman. I mean he got a headshot through seven walls of steel. SEVEN WALLS OF STEEL!" Livewire was beginning to run out of breath.

"We found a heavy turret in the Phoenix. Do you mind explaining that?"

"I tore it off." Livewire said calmly.

The C.O. was surprised. "You did WHAT?"

Livewire thought he was about to receive a lecture so he took the defensive. "Well I had to blow the seekers to oblivion somehow." Livewire pauses to think over his words. "Oblivion." He mutters before snapping his fingers. "That's what I'm gonna call her."

"Do you always name your weapons?"

"Hell yeah; I named my revolver Avalon!"

The rest of the debriefing was only the two talking about the events that occurred throughout the assignment. They talked about the ghost ship, the Dawning hope abandoning them, and the other events leading up to their current time. Before reaching the conclusion of the debriefing, the C.O. began to ask questions about the equipment being used, surprising Livewire that all of their provided equipment was all prototypes. The C.O. was pleased to hear that the equipment all functioned properly.

It was Skillsaw's turn to be debriefed next. Unlike Livewire, he sat impatiently while waiting, especially since the C.O. was taking longer than before.

"Good evening, Skillsaw. How are you doin'?" Jackson finally walked into the room, sounding as sincere as possible so as to not anger the cyborg any further for all the waiting.

Skillsaw felt insulted at the question. "You're kidding me, right?"

"I had to turn in my report to the captain." Jackson finally sits down and begins looking through a different portfolio. "Okay, Skillsaw, let's get started. I'll be asking you a series of questions. All answers, replies, and remarks are strictly confidential."

Skillsaw crossed his arms as he waited to be questioned. "Alright. Shoot."

"So how was your first assignment?" he looks up at Skillsaw whom tried to avoid eye contact before replying.

"It was good."

The C.O. perked up at the blank response. "That's it?"

Skillsaw smirked. "Mmhm."

"Alright then." He sighs. "Continuing on. From the looks of your profile, it's been a long time since you've taken a life. What did you feel when you pulled the trigger on someone else again."

"I feel nothing." Skillsaw replied darkly. A mall moment of awkward silence passed before he busted into a small chuckle. "Relax, sir. Nothing's changed. Just another pathetic life removed from this universe."

The C.O. looked at him questioningly before jotting down some notes. "Moving on. So what do you think of your new partners?" He was almost afraid to hear the answer.

"Livewire's freakin' stronger than an ox: he pulled a bolted turret out of its place." Skillsaw chuckled in amazement. "I bet he's even stronger than you."

"Say what now?" The C.O. seemed insulted. "Man, you got it all wrong." He tried to remain composed from Skillsaw's remark. "I'm stronger than him. I tore out a turret of the same description and used it with one hand." Skillsaw smiled, seeing that he hit the right note. Jackson takes a deep breath to calm himself down. "What about the other one?"

"Hawk? He's fast. I mean he's very fast. He's so fast he makes fast people look…not so fast."

"I get it, he's fast."

"He's a very skilled pilot and sniper." Skillsaw lowers his voice to whisper. "He shot an anti-material round through seven walls of steel. That guy saved my tail today."

The two continued with the debriefing, talking about Skillsaw's equipment, including he AI, the defibrillator, the chainsaw, and the hacking tool. The discussion moved on to what happened throughout their assignment on the ghost ship. The C.O. seemed very interested when Skillsaw began to talk about the lieutenant of San Venganza that claimed to know him from the past. The debriefing finally concluded and Skillsaw left the room at a hurried pace.

"D**n, that guy's in a hurry." The C.O. continued jotting notes until he got up and left the room himself to turn in his report to the captain.

Hawk was last to be debriefed. He didn't mind waiting; he found ways to entertain himself with his gear as he sat patiently. The C.O. finally came in through the door, walking aggressively to his seat.

"Okay, Hawk." He clears his throat. "I'll be asking you a series of questions. All replies, remarks, and answers are strictly confidential."

Hawk was intrigued at the annoyed tone of the C.O.'s voice and decided to have some fun with him. "Good evening to you too." He said with a big smile at his face.

"Good evening." The C.O. muttered angrily. "May, we continue."

"Sure."

"How was your first assignment?"

"Kick a**! Next question." The smile refused to come off of Hawk's face.

"From what I see in your file-" Jackson starts flipping through the pages of Hawk's portfolio. "It's been a long time. What did you feel when you shot at another living being?"

A small pause occurred as hawk seemed to be seriously pondering the question. "The recoil?" Hawk could've sworn he saw a smile tugging at Jackson's cheek as he took notes.

"So what do you think of your new partners?"

"Well, Livewire's actually quite intelligent for a brute. You'd think that the big, strong guy would be a dumba**, but not with him." Hawk said sincerely. "Skillsaw is alright. I mean there's nothing wrong with the guy. I like those cybernetic implants though. I would like a mechanical arm sometime."

"I heard you're quite the sniper."

"Hell yeah I am." The enthusiasm returned. "I shot a pre-heated, anti-material round through seven walls of steel and pulled a headshot. I saved that cyborg's a**!"

A brief silence passed as Jackson continued to take notes. "Do you possess any other skills?"

Hawk smirked. "I'm the best pilot. I did the sharpest one-eighty degree flip while still in full motion to blast the hunter-seekers' a**es to hell!"

"You also brought back the frigate known as The Mistress, am I righ?"

"Oh, that reminds me. I get to keep her, right? I mean, I did bring her back." Hawk was on the verge of pathetically begging.

"Maybe." The C.O. slides projected images across the surface of the table to Hawk. "Evidence shows that 'pirates' attacked the ship. Did you encounter any?"

Hawk was so focused on the photo of the symbol written in blood that he didn't even hear the question. "What?"

The C.O. noticed that Hawk's irises were suddenly yellow and faded back to its natural green color. He took note about it but decided not to question it.

The two continued the debriefing; talking more about the events on the ghost ship labeled "Mistress" than the other events that occurred on the communication station and the ride back. The conclusion of the debriefing was about Hawk's prototype equipment and body armor. The two were pleased at the results.

Before Hawk left, the C.O. dubbed Hawk the owner of the Phoenix and The Mistress and granted him free access to any necessary maintenance.


	7. Chapter 6

Army of Two

** July 12, 2172 18:37**

** Living Quarters **

** La Habra**

Right after Fenrir returned from being greeted by the captain at the hanger, they made their way to their living quarters to discuss things. Hawk was the first to unpack and wind down after an exhausting assignment. Livewire didn't bother himself with winding down and headed to Skillsaw's room.

"So what did you want to talk to me about?" Livewire whispered to Skillsaw. He took a sip of rum from a metal flask while leaning against the door frame.

Skillsaw quickly remembered that he had asked for Livewire to speak to him after the assignment was over. "Right! Back on that ghost ship, remember that android that was trying to kill you?"

"Yeah." He sighs as he enters the room completely and sits on a nearby chair. "Unfortunately."

"You weren't its target."

"What!?" Livewire quickly slaps a hand over his lips, hoping that he didn't stir Hawk from his slumber.

Skillsaw hushes him harshly before continuing. "It was programmed to assassinate a person named Shawn Hoffman after the ship jumped."

"Jumped?" Livewire takes another sip. "What do you mean by 'jumped'?"

"The Mistress was unknowingly testing a prototype that will allow it to travel faster than the speed of light to arrive at other quadrants of any sector faster without burning so much fuel." Skillsaw pauses to think further about the subject. Livewire only sat patiently while listening and drinking. "I suppose it is meant to be used as an alternate way of travel than using the gates that are most commonly used for long distances."

"But the gates document every traveler that passes through them. Maybe this…prototype is meant for the traveler to remain hidden from the government." Livewire suggested before taking another sip. "So how did the ship end up looking so old?"

"The prototype caused every molecule on that ship to speed up its half-life to the point of decomposing. It killed everyone except for that guy that worked closest to the prototype. It had a different affect on him; it was sort of killing him as slowly as possible."

"That sounds like something worth looking into." Livewire ponders out loud to himself.

"What are you gonna do about it?"

"I know a guy that has knowledge about things that not even the government knows about."

"Do you know where he is?"

Livewire stood up from his seat. "He told me that he would go to the closest, cheapest planet funded by the government before Earth's doomsday. The only one that fits that description is planet: Svartalfheim. I'll head there after my debriefing."

"Okay then, good luck." Livewire left Skillsaw's room to head towards debriefing. After he left, Skillsaw kept thinking to himself about their conversation. He felt as if he forgot to tell him something he just couldn't put a finger on it.

** July 12, 2172 20:03**

** Hanger**

** La Habra**

Near the end of his debriefing, Skillsaw finally remembered what it was that he wanted to tell Livewire and as soon as he was done, he raced out of the briefing room to find him at the hanger.

"Livewire! Wait!" He yelled at the top of his lungs a he tried to catch up to Livewire.

"Hey, 'tsup?" Livewire responded casually when he spotted Skillsaw nearing him.

"I need to ask a favor of you."

Livewire's face suddenly grew stern. "That depends, what do you need?"

"The prototype is an FTL drive. If you can look that up, that should help you out?" Livewire nodded in reply. "Thanks. Also, that guy Hawk shot through seven walls called me 'Joseph Carter', if you can look up that name for me as well." Livewire rolled his eyes, irritated, but nodded none the less. "I took his tags." He handed Livewire the dog tags. "So you could look into him as well."

"Anything else?" Livewire hoped for a "no," but Skillsaw nodded.

"Yeah, he gave me a disk. I hope your contact can see what that disk holds." Skillsaw waved the disk in his hand. Livewire quickly snatched from his hand and put it away in his duffel bag. "Good luck out there, man."

Skillsaw turned to leave but was immediately stopped when he felt a heavy hand grab him by the shoulder. Livewire leaned in to whisper in his ear. "I want a bottle of red wine from seventy-two…eighteen-seventy-two."

Skillsaw knew that what he wanted came with a price. "Fine." He sighs in surrender.

The cyborg walked back to his living quarters to find that Hawk was packing up and prepping to leave.

"Hey, where's Livewire?" Hawk asks once he saw Skillsaw entering their quarters.

"He's out on business." Skillsaw didn't want to give Hawk any more information than was necessary. "Why are you packing up?"

"Well, if you were here, you would know that we have another assignment."

Skillsaw was surprised by this. "Already? We just finished our first and, may I remind you, it was only a training mission."

"Don't worry yourself amigo." Hawk grinned. "We got ourselves a month before we should leave." Hawk fixes the baseball cap on his head and took off with his gear held over his shoulder.

** August 14, 2172 18:37**

** Phoenix**

** Alpha Sector**

** En route to Planet: Ilos**

** Operation: Winter's Wrath**

The whole flight was silent since Hawk and Skillsaw left La Habra. Neither one of them spoke since their briefing. The flight was meant to take two hours. An hour and a half passed in silence. Skillsaw sat in one of the passenger seats while Hawk piloted the gunship.

"A terrorist group has hijacked a heavily armored cargo ship." Skillsaw remembers hearing MIKE's monotonic voice when he was being briefed. "What they didn't know is that they were transmitting a signal. We've traced them to a planet not allied with any government. Ilos is basically one giant tropical forest. We need you two to destroy the ship entirely including whatever fortress these terrorists reside in."

It's been a while since Skillsaw has heard of Livewire, he kept thinking about what was happening and the reasons behind it all. After agreeing with himself that it was just paranoia, he pushed those thoughts to the back of his mind.

"Someone's awfully quiet." Hawk smirked, trying to break the silence.

Skillsaw didn't even notice Hawk when he spoke to him. "Huh?"

"Uh, nothing." Hawk stammered. "We're almost there."

"Oh." Was all the cyborg managed to say.

"We're entering the atmosphere in 3…2…1…brace yourself." The ship started rocking harshly from the speed that it entered the planet's surface. The flight returned to its smooth state after a while.

"We should land over there." Skillsaw pointed to a dense forest. Far away from what looked like a small fortress.

"But their base is just a few seconds away." Hawk argued.

"We should gather whatever info we can from these people before we destroy them." Skillsaw suggested.

"Alright then." Hawk landed the Phoenix where Skillsaw suggested and made sure that it was well hidden in the cover of the trees.

Skillsaw was the first to exit the Phoenix once it landed and began to walk through the forest with a doubtful Hawk trailing behind.

"Do you even know where you're going?" Hawk asked before running into a low hanging branch. It didn't hurt, thanks to his helmet, but he began to curse to himself for not seeing it before.

"Yeah." Skillsaw said blankly.

"Wait…how do you know? Umph!" Hawk tripped and almost fell face flat on the muddy ground. He looks up to notice Skillsaw was holding his goggles in his hand. "Oh." He mutters after realizing that the cyborg must have been using his mechanical eye and wipes the mud off his visor as he gets back on his feet.

Skillsaw turns around in time to see Hawk finish wiping off the mud. He crosses his arms and leans on a nearby tree, irritated that he had to wait. "You should've probably left it on. Your armor might give you away."

"Won't your equipment give you away?" Hawk snickered and took Skillsaw's advice and left whatever mud was on his armor.

Skillsaw believed Hawk was talking about his glossy, black, metallic arms and was almost insulted by it. "I never get caught."

"Nice." Hawk goes into a light jog to catch up. "So where's there location?"

"About twenty miles from here." He muttered plainly as he continued to walk.

"That's not so far. Why not just run?" Hawk was confused that they were heading towards their destination at such a slow pace.

"They might be expecting us. If they are, then that's exactly what they would want us to do." Skillsaw erects his chainsaw and revs it up. He continued his explanation while sawing through branches and thick grass in his way. "And if we do run right now, we'll be worn out and ready to be easily killed."

Hawk was more interested at how silent the cyborg's chainsaw was than his explanation. "Oh." Was all he could bring himself to say. It took another five minutes before either spoke again. "It's gonna get dark out soon."

"We'll make camp here for the night."

** August 14, 2172 20:27**

** ILOS**

** Operation: Winter's Wrath**

The night was painfully quiet for a jungle. Not a single sound of wildlife was there to be heard. Hawk was about to start a fire but Skillsaw was quick to stop him.

"It will give away our position." He explained to Hawk, leaving the two endure the cold night.

Hawk didn't complain. He set up his sleeping gear, removed his armor, and prepped himself for a small meal. "So tell me, Skillsaw, how did you become a cyborg?" He asked as he munched on his rations.

Skillsaw had already finished eating and was checking his weapons. "I already told you guys. I was told that I was in an explosion. A bomb that I was trying to diffuse was purposely detonated to kill me. They said I was betrayed by my own team."

"But you don't remember any of it. Do you?"

Skillsaw shook his head.

"Do you honestly believe that they told you exactly what happened?" Hawk asks suspiciously while taking another bite of his jerky.

"No. But I don't have anything else to believe in." Skillsaw raised his revolver to gaze upon it under the pale, moon-light.

"So how do your mechanics work?"

"Each nerve in the parts of my body that they're connected to is connected to nano-receptors in my biotics so I could have complete control of them as if they were my natural limbs and organs." The cyborg holstered his revolver and began to inspect the revolver he retrieved from Richard back on Munin.

Hawk took a big gulp of his food before continuing the conversation. "Wow. What about your AI?"

"How did you get that scar across your face?" Skillsaw quickly interrupted Hawk to change the topic of the conversation.

"What? This?" Hawk asked enthusiastically, pointing a finger down the scar that lined from the top right of his face to the bottom left. Not minding that Skillsaw abruptly changed the subject. "Okay, I got it from when I was with my ground unit."

"Wait." Skillsaw immediately stopped him. "I thought you said you were a pilot." He pointed out.

"Well, I am also infantry as well, and a d**ned good one too!" Hawk gave a devilish grin. "I led a small unit of Rangers in the Army before I moved to Air-Force during the Great World War. We'd be transported all over Earth for special operations before the nuclear strike."

"And it was during one of those operations that you got injured in?" Skillsaw assumed out loud.

"Right, we were talking about the scar." Hawk nearly slapped himself for going off track with the topic. "I would usually spar with my si-" He immediately cut himself off before he revealed any critical information. "-soldiers when we got bored."

Skillsaw noticed the pilot's hesitation but decided not to question it. Not directly at least. "It's impossible to get such a mark like that in Close-quarters-combat." He pointed out.

"We were fencing." Hawk immediately cleared the cyborg's confusion. "Well…she was fencing, I was using a battle-axe."

That last sentence reminded Skillsaw about a question that lingered in the back of his mind for a while now. "Why do you use an axe?"

"Embracing my Viking heritage." Hawk smiled. "It's in my blood."

Skillsaw only continued to stare inquisitively at Hawk.

"Whew! Well, isn't it getting pretty late?" Hawk asked rhetorically. "Time to hit the rack." He yawned sarcastically.

Skillsaw only nodded in agreement.

"I'll take the first watch." Hawk announced.

"No." Skillsaw muttered. "You need your rest."

"Okay, suit yourself." Hawk said as he quickly bedded down for the night in his make-shift sleeping bag.

The cyborg ignored Hawk's enthusiasm and only continued to inspect the revolver.

After a few minutes of just inspecting his weapons, Skillsaw finally decided to place them in their proper areas on his armor.

"AIVI, scan the area for hostiles." He spoke once he was sure that Hawk was asleep. He swept the landscape with his mechanical eye slowly to allow his AI to get a clear scan of the area.

"No hostiles detected."

He sighed in relief at hearing that the two of them were alone in the night.

For the moment.

Skillsaw moved himself into a meditative position and began to concentrate on his surroundings without using his sense of sight. A light breeze began to pick up, letting the cyborg relax a little more but he didn't let his guard down.

The sound of shuffling leaves caused Skillsaw to whirl into a fighting stance, aiming his revolver at the edge of the forest which the sound came from. Everything went silent again, but he kept his aim on the bushes a few hundred yards away from where the sound emanated from. A second later, a little snout peeked out of the bushes, sniffing the air.

Skillsaw began to lower his weapon until he saw the eye-less head pop out as well. "SNIFFS!" he shouted, causing Hawk to rouse from his slumber.

"What?" Hawk asked groggily while he began to get to his feet.

"We got sniffs!" the cyborg repeated.

The small bi-pedal creature leaped out of the bushes, charging at the two with its muscular limbs.

Skillsaw was about to pull the trigger but Hawk quickly unloaded a magazine on the sniff from his suppressed side-arm. Hawk moved so fast that the cyborg didn't even have time to notice it.

"I had the shot!" Skillsaw muttered aggressively.

"You _have_ a loud gun." Hawk rebutted and holstered his weapon. "What did you say that thing was called?"

"Sniffs. They're in the family of snouts, only they are smaller and have no eyes whatsoever." Skillsaw explained, completely forgetting the fact that Hawk took his kill. "Predator creatures."

"Wait…" Hawk pondered the information for a second or two. "Don't all snouts hunt in packs?" He asked worriedly.

"That's what I was thinking." Skillsaw holsters his revolver and erects his chainsaw, revving up the silent chain. "AIVI, scan for similar life-forms."

"Scanning complete. You are both surrounded." She said through both of their intercoms.

"F**K! Did she just say what I think she just said!?" Hawk cursed. He was quickly removing the suppressor from his side-arm to apply it to his assault-rifle. "Safety's off!"

"Back-to-back!" They chimed in unison as they came together to cover each other's backs.

The two anxiously waited for the first sniff to appear when a sudden screech filled the air. The sound started from one point but was quickly answered by the surrounding throng of snouts. The two knew it to be a sign that they were about to be attacked.

All the sniffs attacked simultaneously; charging towards the center of their circle to where Skillsaw and Hawk were taking their stand.

Hawk was the first to attack; firing short bursts from his assault-rifle and hitting every target dead on, keeping most of his attackers at bay.

Skillsaw had to wait a while for the sniffs to get in his range before he started swinging his chainsaw, spilling their neon-green blood and entrails across the battle field.

The two survived the first few waves of snouts unscathed but each wave progressively became more difficult than the last. The sniffs that were able to avoid getting slaughtered, pierced their fangs into them, not caring where they were biting. Hawk took the most damage since he wasn't wearing his usual armor but Skillsaw's mechanical limbs were showing signs of critical damage since liquid mercury could be seen seeping out of the holes that the sniffs would leave behind.

"Skillsaw, shock me!" Hawk shouted while reloading his weapon and enduring the pain that the sniffs left behind. Each time he would have to reload, the radius between him and the sniffs would shrink, allowing more to bite into his warm flesh.

"What?" Skillsaw was so busy slicing the sniffs that he didn't notice Hawk speaking to him.

"Your defibrillator. Charge me up!" The anticipation in Hawk's voice was clear as he began to run low on ammo.

"AIVI, charge the defib." Skillsaw ordered as he continued to slice the oncoming sniffs.

"Defibrillator charged." AIVI said a few seconds later.

The sniffs were striking Hawk with their fangs and claws. Hawk felt a cold, metallic hand placed firmly on his bleeding shoulder and awaited the surge of electricity to course through his body.

"NOW!" The cyborg shouted. The electricity caused the sniffs on him to fly off with their flesh burning as it convulsed.

Hawk opened his eyes after the sudden shock to see the sniffs that were attacking him to be convulsing at his feet. With the electricity coursing through his body, Hawk moved faster than ever. Using as much of the energy from the shock as he could, he aimed, fired, and reloaded fast enough to push the sniffs back and increase the radius between him and them again.

Ammunition was running low for his assault-rifle but as he pushed the sniffs back, he realized that the hilt of his axe lay at his feet. _They must've kicked it here while they were ambushing us. _He thought to himself. Hawk quickly kicked the hilt of his axe in the air while dropping his empty assault-rifle. Once he caught the hilt of his axe, he immediately pressed the button to erect the blades of his axe and began to hack at the sniffs; whacking some of them with the flat of the blades.

"They're retreating!" Hawk pointed out after there was only about ten of them left. He finished off four when the fifth decided to run away. "Oh no, you don't." Hawk grinned as he threw his axe at the fleeing sniff, hitting it dead center.

Skillsaw, on the other hand, was using Gleipnir to pull the fleeing creatures back to him and slicing them open in mid-air. He finished them off in time to see Hawk returning with his axe resting over his shoulder.

"You alright?" The cyborg asks.

"Yeah. You?"

"Of course. Why?"

"You look like s**t." Hawk takes a brief pause. "Green s**t." this caused the two of them to burst into laughter. Once the laughter died down, Skillsaw grew stern as he wiped the blood off of himself.

"We should move out. It's not safe here." He muttered coldly.

"Yeah, we should." Hawk sighed in frustration that the good mood suddenly vanished. "Let me treat my wounds first."

** August 15, 2172 05:37**

** ILOS**

** 10 miles from destination**

** Winter's Wrath**

"Stick to the trees." Skillsaw said at the first glimpse of a sunrays breaking through the thick fog. The two just woke up after relocating to another resting spot at the edge of a forest.

Hawk only gazed upon the tall trees, not even acknowledging Skillsaw's advice. He continued to look until a question suddenly appeared in his mind. "How far are we from our destination?" he mumbled as he yawned while stretching.

"'bout ten miles." Skillsaw replied as he popped his vertebrae and stretched himself awake. "Okay, let's start climbing." He grunts as he jumps towards the closest tree, holding onto the center of the trunk to get a grip before climbing all the way to the top.

Hawk quickly runs up the trunk of a different tree and jumps onto the nearest branch in midway. "Ha, beat 'cha to the top." He boasts out loud. Skillsaw only ignored him. A sudden crack from below him snapped him out of his proud moment. Hawk quickly grabbed hold of the trunk before the branch broke off.

Skillsaw burst into laughter after seeing the whole thing play out, especially after seeing how Hawk wrapped himself around the tree trunk. "You look like a cat holding on for your life." He chuckles.

"Hey!" Hawk rebutted but then smirked. "Meow meow, b***h!" The cyborg only gave a confused look but decided not to question it. Hawk shifts himself onto another branch. "Why are we even taking the trees?" He asks once he was on a sturdy branch.

"They have land mines planted throughout the forest." Skillsaw replied as he waited patiently for Hawk to be set. "You ready?"

"Yeah."

"Alright then. They're located north from here in case you get lost. I'll wait for you at the other side." Skillsaw smirked. He was the first to start jumping from tree-branch to tree-branch, getting closer to their destination while leaving Hawk in the dust.

Believing that he was far ahead, Skillsaw never looked over his shoulder once to see how far Hawk was. Seeing that the edge of the forest wasn't that far from where he was at, he smiled to himself at the thought of being victorious. A little while later, a cry of laughter caught him by surprise. He looked up to the direction of the sound only to see Hawk somersaulting overhead.

"See ya at the other side, sucka!" Hawk shouted playfully as he turned around briefly to show Skillsaw the finger before continuing to jump, flip, and swing from branch to branch.

Skillsaw was too dumbstruck at the sight of the pilot's agility to get infuriated by his actions.

It didn't take so long after that until they reached the other end of the forest where it opened up into another plain field. In the middle of the field stood an open-roof, armored truck with spiked tires and armed with a mounted dual missile turrets while two sentries walked around it.

"Do you know how to fix an automobile?" Skillsaw whispers to Hawk who was watching the same thing through the scope of his rifle.

"Yup." Hawk replies lightly, "You want me to take 'em out?"

"And where is all the fun in that?" Skillsaw mutters darkly with a smug grin.

Hawk returns the look with another grin behind his helmet and begins to climb down the tree to hide in the tall grass. "Bet I can take my prey without triggering an alarm." He whispers through the intercom.

"You're on." Skillsaw replies.

He waited for a while until Hawk was a good few meters away from the tree before he jumped into the grass himself without making so much as a sound.

"Are you sure there's nothing stuck between the tires?" one of the sentries asked as he was bent over to inspect the rear tires while he smoked a cigar.

"Naw, man, it's the engine." The other replied while peering under the hood to take a look at the engine. He was unaware of the crouching cyborg sneaking up behind him.

"Are you sure?" The other sentry shouted.

Skillsaw cupped his hand on the sentry's mouth, crushing his jaw in the process, and unsheathed the sentry's blade, stabbing him repeatedly before he deemed him dead.

Meanwhile, Hawk was standing silently behind the other sentry.

"I said: _are you sure_?" the sentry repeated. He turns around to walk to the front of the vehicle only to freeze in shock at the sight of Hawk's sudden appearance.

Hawk only smiled evilly before quickly snapping the sentry's neck.

Skillsaw walks towards the rear of the vehicle to see that Hawk was already done with his work.

"Guess it was a tie, Skillsaw." He noted.

Skillsaw was quick to end Hawk's little moment. "Nope."

Hawk didn't take the cyborg's remark lightly. "What? What d' you mean '_no_'?"

Skillsaw gave a devious smile before replying, "He didn't see me." He points a finger at the dead sentry with a knife still lodged in his chest.

"Fine." Hawk sighs in frustration, "But I'm driving!"

"Fix her first, remember?" Skillsaw said as he waved a wrench in front of Hawk.

Hawk only snatched the wrench of his hand without a word and went to fix the engine of the vehicle.

Skillsaw waited on the driver's seat until Hawk was done with the repairs. He was beginning to dose off since he considered his waiting to be boring and decided to take a nap.

"Fire her up!" Hawk yelled.

Skillsaw quickly snapped awake and subconsciously turned the key in the ignition. After three times of turning the key, the engine finally decided to work.

"Whew, what'd I tell ya, mi amigo?!" Hawk hollered in joy, "Fifth time's the charm!"

"You said 'third time's the charm'." Skillsaw corrected him.

Hawk only rubbed it off as nothing. He was too good in a mood to get upset about being corrected. "Yeah, whatever," Was all he said as he walked towards the driver's seat where Skillsaw was still sitting. "Man the turret, won't'cha?"

Skillsaw simply said, "Got it" before moving towards the mounted missile turret.

As Hawk settled himself in the driver's seat, Skillsaw tested the controls to get acquainted with what he was working with. Hawk removed his helmet and set it off on the passenger's seat before looking at the cyborg with a sly look on his face.

"What?" Skillsaw asks.

"Buckle up for safety mutha-f**ka!" Hawk smiles before flooring the accelerator. "You're not gonna hurl on me, are you, Skillsaw?" he teases over the roaring wind.

"Nope!" Skillsaw yelled back.

"Let's try the turbo, shall we?"

Skillsaw only gave Hawk a thumbs up before bracing himself for the full force of the speed.

Hawk stayed on the open road for a little over an hour, following the tracks from which the truck came from.

"Stop right here!" Skillsaw shouted, causing Hawk to slam on the brakes, making the truck's rear side lift a few inches off the ground.

Hawk turns to look at a stiff Skillsaw holding tight on the bars. "Who looks like a cat now?" He taunts with a smirk on his face. "Meow. So why are we stopping he-" Hawk was cut off in midsentence by a sniper-shot that ricocheted off the hood of the truck. "Oh s**t!" Hawk yells as he quickly takes cover. He immediately peers over the car just enough to scan the area for the sniper and is relieved to realize that he was on the opposite side of the truck. "If only I had my helmet."

"Skillsaw, we got a sniper near the compound." Hawk received no reply. "Skillsaw?" Hawk looks towards the turret to see it unmanned. _Where the hell did he go?_ He thought to himself. He looked towards the passenger's seat to notice that his helmet was still there. _Let's see if I can reach it. _With the barrel of his rifle, Hawk attempted to acquire his helmet. After about a minute or so, he finally had it in his hands.

All of a sudden, a light bulb went off in the pilot's mind as he thought up an idea. He placed his helmet on top of his sniper's barrel and slowly moves it just barely over the hood and begins to shift it side to side to catch the enemy sniper's attention. Not a while later, bullets began to fly by as the enemy sniper tried to hit the helmet when he finally shot it off the barrel of Hawk's sniper. Hawk quickly sets his sniper on the hood of the truck and aims through the scope. He was about to pull the trigger until he spotted Skillsaw.

Skillsaw snuck up behind the distracted enemy sniper and placed his hand over the sentry's mouth, crushing the jaw, and unsheathes his target's blade to stab it through his target's throat. He waited for the sentry to stop squirming and gagging before kicking him away from him.

"Was this your plan all along?" Hawk asked as he walked toward Skillsaw while admiring the scratch the sniper shot did to his helmet before putting it back on.

"Yeah, didn't mean to use you like that." Skillsaw said as he scratched the back of his head.

Hawk sighed in defeat. "Ya could've at least told me."

"I'll keep that in mind." Skillsaw began to eye the enemy base that stood before him.

It was a small compound surrounded by thick trees with only one safe road toward and away from it.

The cyborg began to ponder to himself; trying to think up a plan. "The way I see it, you got two choices, Hawk." He began, "Either you snipe on the water tower next to the base or on a tree away from it."

"Why can't I go in their gunzblazin' with you?" Hawk whined.

"I'm not going in there 'gunzblazin' and I need a good sniper to watch my back." Skillsaw places a reassuring hand on Hawk's shoulder.

Hawk just smiles to himself before replying. "D**n right you do!" and with that, he ran off toward the tower and climbed to the top to set himself up. Deep down, he was grateful that no one inside the compound has spotted him.

Meanwhile, Skillsaw stood in front of a nearby two-story building. He looked up to see the edge of the rooftop and used Gleipnir to launch himself to the top. "Hawk, is there anyone in the second floor?" He asks through the intercom as he made his way to the center of the rooftop.

"I don't think so. I'm not picking up anything through the thermals."

Skillsaw kneels down to one knee, erects a small portion of his chainsaw, and uses it to cut a hole big enough for him to enter. He pushes the cut-out piece of the roof to the side and uses it to cover the hole as he dropped through it into a dark, windowless room. The cyborg waited a moment to let his eyes adjust to the darkness before moving on.

After silently sweeping the entire second floor for sentries, only to find none, he concluded that the whole second floor was their armory. Each room was similar to the first, holding a variety of equipment: from explosives to armor, gadgets to ammo, and side-arms to rocket launchers. The entire building itself had flags and graffiti of the same symbol that was found drawn in blood on the wall of the Mistress.

As Skillsaw was checking the contents of one of many crates in the room, he heard a rather timid voice coming from the first floor. "I'm gonna go check on the gear." The sentry announced as he headed upstairs. The whole second floor was powered down so once the sentry entered it; he switched on the lights to get a better view of where he was going.

Hearing that the sentry was nearby, Skillsaw quietly waits by the door. Unfortunately for him, though, the sentry decided to go in the same room first. All of a sudden, the lights were flicked on, temporarily blinding the cyborg.

As the sentry looked through the crate Skillsaw left open, the stealthy cyborg slowly began to sneak up behind him. The radio on the sentry buzzed on, making Skillsaw freeze in fear of being caught.

"Hey, Jody, remember that one hot chick that turned you down?" it said.

"Yeah, bro. Dude, dude, I swear, she-" a bullet through the forehead cut Jody off in midsentence.

"Jody? What was that noise?"

After the initial shock of a sniper bullet shooting at his target through a wall, Skillsaw's blood began to boil. "What the hell was that for?!" he whispered harshly through the intercom. "That was my kill! _My kill!_"

"The guy sounded like an annoying b***h, so I shot him." Hawk explained.

Skillsaw was about to argue but stopped himself when he heard the radio of the dead sentry buzz again.

"Jody, don't be screwin' around, they'll be here any minute."

Skillsaw was in wide-eyed shock at hearing that they were being expected. "Hawk, we may have been compromised. Stay alert!"

"Got it." Hawk replied. "You have a group of sentries coming towards you from the first floor." He warned.

"Gee thanks." Skillsaw sighed, annoyed at having to deal with more than what he wanted.

"No problem." Hawk replied cheerfully, ignoring Skillsaw's annoyed tone.

"Jody, respond."

Skillsaw knelt down on one knee right next to the corpse and picked up the radio from its chest. "Your 'Jody' is dead." He muttered darkly, "As for the rest of you…none of you will live to tell the tale." He stands up and cooks a grenade before tossing it at the door.

Once the door slammed open, the fragmentation grenade detonated at the face of the point man, killing him instantly while injuring the other three; the first two suffered from critical concussions while the last one was trapped underneath them.

The surviving sentry stood up, staggering on his feet, trying to endure the sense of vertigo. "We…need…back up…immedi-"

"You're still alive?" Skillsaw's evil laughter cut off the sentry in midsentence. "Not for long." The cyborg wraps an arm tightly around the sentry's head and twists it a full one-eighty degrees. The loud snap of the vertebrae was like music to Skillsaw's ears and he smiled at his work.

The sudden sounds of gunfire from outside the building disrupted his admiration of his work. "Hawk, what's going on out there?"

"S**t's going down!" Hawk replied enthusiastically, "and a lot of it!" A wave of static flowed through the intercom. "They're trying to cut us off!"

Skillsaw ran out of the building as fast as he could, shooting everyone that stood in his way. After a while, he finally reached the landing zone where a shuttle was preparing to launch. The cyborg spotted a trio of sentries running toward the shuttle but they were being picked off by the sniper. "Nice shot, Hawk. I'm going to blow up the ship, take care of any sentries left."

Hawk tried to stifle his laughter and reply at the same time. "Alright," was all he was able to say. Skillsaw made a mental note to confront him about it.

The ship began to launch but Skillsaw refused to fail his mission to destroy it. He draws Gleipnir and fires it at the side of the ship to reel himself onto it. Once Skillsaw was on top of the ship, he braced himself by jamming his chainsaw through it. Now knowing that the ship won't exit the planet's atmosphere, he cut open a large hole and entered the ship.

Once inside, he fought through every sentry onboard; cutting, slicing, and stabbing about five sentries. Blood stained the whole interior of the shuttle. The cyborg left the shuttle on autopilot as he began to make the ship into one giant bomb. "Hawk, get the Phoenix ready and follow this ship."

"Why? What're you doin'!?" Hawk asked worriedly, "Why don't you just land it?!"

Skillsaw was hesitant on replying. "I-think I may have been a little over excessive on turning this ship into a bomb that I can't exactly _land _it anymore."

Hawk grunted in irritation, "I'll be there in about twenty minutes."

"You got five." Skillsaw replied as he opened a side door of the ship to see how high above the ground he was. He gulped nervously once he took a look outside."Wow, that's a long fall."

"Skillsaw!" Hawk shouted, "I'm getting the gunship started now, just hold on!"

"That was fast." The cyborg mumbled.

"Yeah, this truck can mow down through trees like a hot knife through butter." Hawk noted almost childishly. "How much time do you have left?"

Skillsaw hesitantly looked back to the timer he left on the screen. "You got about two minutes, Hawk!" Skillsaw was beginning to think that he should jump instead of waiting. At the one-minute mark, he made his decision. "Hawk, I'm gonna have to jump."

"B***h, you better not!" Hawk threatened.

"I'm gonna jump."

"Don't you dare-"

"Hawk!" Skillsaw screamed, cutting off the pilot's threat.

"What!?" Hawk yelled back, annoyed at being cut off.

"I Jumped!"

That just brought Hawk past his boiling point."Mother-f***er! I thought I told you not to!"

"Just stop your whining and hurry!" Skillsaw came out of his nose dive by slightly spreading the armor pieces of his mechanical limbs to cause significant air resistance to dampen the speed of his fall. The sudden explosion from the ship knocked him off course. "Hawk!"

"_Just stop your whining and hurry_," the pilot mocked, "The rear hatch is opened, use your grapple gun to get in!"

Time seemed to slow down for Skillsaw as loads and loads of adrenaline was dumped into his bloodstream. The Phoenix passed by under him and with Gleipnir, he shoots a handle bar inside the gunship and reels himself in.

Once inside, the cyborg tried to help his parasympathetic nervous system by deepening his breathing as the hatch closed behind him. He slowly but surely made his way to the copilot's seat.

Hawk was still upset at Skillsaw but wanted to make sure everything was still okay. "How do you feel?" he asked once the cyborg sat down.

"Like how you look." Skillsaw was actually still trembling in fear of falling to his death.

"Heh, funny." Hawk said sarcastically, "You's a funny guy."

"Speaking of funny," Skillsaw tried to change the subject, "Why were you laughing as the shuttle was taking off?"

Hawk's mood suddenly changed, "Oh, I know why our mission's called 'Winter's Wrath'."

"Why?"

"The shuttle's name is…was Summer's Breeze." A brief silence passed before the two burst into laughter.

After the laughter died down, Skillsaw sighs to relax himself. "So did you finish them off?"

"You didn't see it?" Hawk sounded surprised. Skillsaw only shook his head in response. "Look behind us."

Skillsaw got off the copilot seat and walked to the back where there was a small, thick window to view the outside from behind the ship. "Why should I look behi-oh…that's why."

Miles away stood a giant mushroom-cloud that only a nuclear bomb could cause. "How's you do that?"

"Simple; I connected and placed all the explosives in a compressed room and then _kaboom_!" Hawk explained excitedly.

"Nice." Skillsaw complemented, "I also noticed you brought the buggy onboard too."

"No s**t. It takes almost the whole ship."

Skillsaw was beginning to think that Hawk was naïve of the risks. "You know it could've been bu-"

"I'm not stupid, I thoroughly swept the car…No bugs." Hawk grew stern again. "How do you think Livewire's doing?"

"Why?" Skillsaw asks as he made his way back to his seat.

"He missed one helluvan' a** kickin'!" The excitement rushed back into him.

"He's on business."

"What exactly is he doing?"

"Research."

"Where?"

"He's at Svartalfheim."

"The planet?"

"Yes."

"What is he researching there?"

"Can we drop it?"

"Fine. I just…want to know." Hawk felt more saddened than angered thinking that a teammate was keeping something from him, but pushed those thoughts to the back of his mind because he knew that he was keeping more information from them.

The rest of the flight back to La Habra was going smooth. Although Hawk would've preferred to see some more action, he didn't mind the peaceful ride. Skillsaw just didn't care for what was going on and fell into a light slumber. Hawk arrived at the closest gate; a large ring sized object capable of creating a wormhole linked to another similar gate for faster transportation, they were large enough for any sized space vehicle to use.

Skillsaw roused from his slumber when he began to hear Hawk mumbling a play-by-play of what he was doing. He immediately was on high alert once he understood what was going on. "Wait, Hawk, don't use the-" he was cut off by the jolt of the ship moving at full speed through the gate and out another.

"I'm sorry, what was that?" Hawk acted as if he didn't hear what Skillsaw was trying to say.

"You better hope our jump wasn't recorded." Skillsaw warns with a growl resonating in his throat.

"Relax, mi amigo, we're almost there." Hawk snickered cheerfully.

** August 17, 2172 12:47**

** Phoenix**

** Midgard Sector**

** En route to La Habra**

** Operation: Winter's Wrath-Success**

"This is the pilot of the Phoenix requesting permission to land." Hawk said through the ship's intercom as he hovered a few miles away from La Habra.

"Mother-f***in' tweetie, it is you!" Skillsaw and Hawk grinned at the sound of Livewire's voice on the speakers. "Hey, Scottie!" they hear Livewire yell. "Let them in, they're with me." A brief pause before Livewire said, "Alright you two, come on in."

"D**n, that's one big a** mother-f***er!" Livewire hollered as he stood patiently waiting for Hawk and Skillsaw to exit the Phoenix; amazed at the sight of the buggy they were riding in.

Hawk began to gently pat the side of the buggy as he drove it slowly, "I call it the Puma."

"How'd you get it?" Livewire asks.

"Fount it." Hawk grinned slyly as he found a place to park it.

"Nice." Livewire nodded approvingly. "Oh, Skillsaw, I need to talk to you too." The cyborg was barely exiting the _Puma_ when Livewire called out to him. "But not until you give me your end of the bargain."

"Right." Skillsaw reaches behind his back to pull out a wine bottle with a red ribbon tied to it from his duffle bag. "Here." He tosses the bottle to Livewire who gently caught it. "It was a legacy for one of the terrorist sentries I killed."

"Holy s**t!" Livewire exclaims excitedly, "Eighteen-thirty-seven!"

"Yup."

"Alright, hurry your a**es up, I'm tellin' you guys now!" Livewire left in a hurry with the other two following close behind.

Once they reached their living quarters, Livewire made a quick sweep of the area before beginning to speak in a whisper. "Okay, I met with a friend that was with the USMC and this guy knows a lot of good s**t." He began while the other two gave him their full attention. "He owns and runs a freakin' underground market and it's because I know him that he gave me the Intel free of charge."

"Who is this guy?" Hawk intervened when Livewire began to take a sip of rum from a flask.

Livewire quickly gulped down the contents to answer that question. "The people that know him, including me, call him the 'Korean' because he considers himself the proudest Korean-born in the universe."

_Right, _Skillsaw thought to himself, _since Earth's Doomsday, people have been identifying their nationality through their ancestry. Ireland-born, Latino-born, and so on and so forth. Now 'American' is used as a term for those who consider themselves tolerant of all nationalities. _

"Okay," Livewire continued, "So, the FTL is a _top-secret_ prototype being developed by Watchtower Industries; the same company that is running_ Operation: Scio phobia._" He took a brief pause to drink some more. "The device is suppose to help ships travel faster than the speed of light, hence: _Faster Than Light_. Now, for 'Shawn Hoffman'-"

Hawk stiffened at the sound of that name. The other two noticed but decided not to question it. At the moment.

"From what I read, he had one f***ed up past." Livewire finally put the top on his flask and placed his flask in his leather jacket's hidden pocket. "He was forcefully separated from his sibling, who's gender wasn't mentioned, after being orphaned at an early age. He moved on with his life and enlisted in the air-force where he became a highly decorated pilot but was later placed on an assignment that cost the lives of his unit with him barely surviving the dogfight. Apparently, whoever he was suppose to fight off didn't like the fact that he survived and later hired assassins to take him out." Livewire pulled out an envelope from the same pocket he hid his flask in and tossed on the table in the middle of their little circle. Once it hit the table, photos of the crime scene slid out. "His corpse was defiled to the point where only his wife, Luna, could identify him and later held a military funeral service for him."

A small period of silence passed between them as if to mourn the death of the soldier in question.

"The assassins-" Livewire broke the silence, "were suspected to be _Shadow Phasers _due to the fact that no physical evidence was obtained and the case was closed off a few months later." He let the other two look at the files and images before moving on to his other findings. "The person Skillsaw encountered on Munin, Richard, used to work for Watchtower as a Shadow Phaser in the Scio phobia operation but was fired for…issues. His anger management and constant disobedience of orders led him to join the terrorist group known as San Venganza, or _Saint Vengeance _who the Government believes is affiliated with the Church."

Livewire turned to look at the cyborg, "His affiliation with Joseph Carter is that Joseph was his last target to assassinate before he went AWOL on Watchtower. Because he didn't exactly complete his assignment perfectly, Carter's corpse is nowhere to be found. The description of Carter is about six feet tall, African-born, and pure human. He probably thought you were Joseph because you fit the description, Skillsaw…well, _almost_ fit the description."

"What about the disk he had?" Skillsaw finally spoke up.

Livewire raised a waved him off with a gentle hand, "Calm your a** down, b***h, I'm getting to that!"


End file.
